“As you say, father, so will I do.”
The old man nodded. “You were getting my funeral ready, weren’t you?”
“The prognosis was very dark. Certain preparations seemed advisable when we heard—”
“Cancel them!”
“Of course.” Then, uncertainly: “Father, special envoys have come from many lands. The Czar’s cousin is here, and the brother of Moctezuma, and a son of the late Sultan, and also—”
“I’ll hold an audience for them all,” said Big Father in great satisfaction. “They’ll have gifts beyond anything they can imagine. Instead of a funeral, boy, we’ll have a jubilee! A celebration of life. Moctezuma’s brother, you say? And who did the Inca send?” Big Father laughed raucously. “All of them clustering around to see me put away underground!” He jabbed a finger against Little Father’s breast. It felt like a spear of bone. “And in Mali they’re dancing in the streets, aren’t they? Can’t contain themselves for glee. But they’ll dance a different dance now.” Big Father’s eyes grew somber. “You know, boy, when I really do die, whenever that is, they’ll try to take you out too, and Mali will invade us. Guard yourself. Guard the nation. Those bastards on the coast hunger to control our caravan routes. They’re probably already scheming now with the foreigners to swallow us the instant I’m gone, but you mustn’t allow them to—ah—ah—”
“Father?”
Abruptly the Emir’s shriveled face crumpled in a frenzy of coughing. He hammered against his thighs with clenched fists. An attendant came running, bearing a beaker of water, and Big Father drank until he had drained it all. Then he tossed the beaker aside as though it were nothing. He was shivering. He looked glassyeyed and confused. His shoulders slumped, his whole posture slackened. Perhaps his “recovery” had been merely the sudden final upsurge of a dying fire.
“You should rest, majesty,” said a new voice from the doorway to the porch. It was Serene Glory’s ringing contralto. “You overtax yourself, I think, in the first hours of this miracle.”
Big Father’s main wife had arrived, entourage and all. In the warmth of the morning she had outfitted herself in a startling robe of purple satin, over which she wore the finest jewels of the kingdom. Little Father remembered that his own mother had worn some of those necklaces and bracelets.
He was unmoved by Serene Glory’s beauty, impressive though it was. How could Serene Glory matter to him with the memory, scarcely two hours old, of Selima’s full breasts and agile thighs still glistening in his mind? But he could not fail to detect Serene Glory’s anger. It surrounded her like a radiant aura. Tension sparkled in her kohl-bedecked eyes.
Perhaps she was still smoldering over Little Father’s deft rejection of her advances as they were riding side by side back from the Great Mosque that day six months earlier. Or perhaps it was Big Father’s unexpected return from the brink that annoyed her. Anyone with half a mind realized that Serene Glory dreamed of putting her own insipid brother on the throne in Little Father’s place the moment the old Emir was gone, and thus maintaining and even extending her position at the summit of power. Quite likely she, like Little Father, had by now grown accustomed to the idea of Big Father’s death and was having difficulty accepting the news that it would be somewhat postponed.
To Little Father she said, “Our prayers have been answered, all glory to Allah! But you mustn’t put a strain on the Emir’s energies in this time of recovery. Perhaps you ought to go.”
“I was summoned, lady.”
“Of course. Quite rightly. And now you should go to the mosque and give thanks for what has been granted us all.”
Her gaze was imperious and unanswerable. In one sentence Serene Glory had demoted him from imminent king to wastrel prince once again. He admired her gall. She was three years younger than Little Father, and here she was ordering him out of the royal presence as though he were a child. But of course she had had practice at ordering people around: her father was one of the greatest landlords of the eastern province. She had moved amidst power all her life, albeit power of a provincial sort. Little Father wondered how many noblemen of that province had spent time between the legs of Serene Glory before she had ascended to her present high position.
He said, “If my royal father grants me leave to go—”
The Emir was coughing again. He looked terrible.
Serene Glory went to him and bent close over him, so the old man could smell the fragrance rising from her breasts, and instantly Big Father relaxed. The coughing ceased and he sat up again, almost as vigorous as before. Little Father admired that maneuver too. Serene Glory was a worthy adversary. Probably her people were already spreading the word in the city that it was the power of her love for the Emir, and not the prayers of the three saints, that had brought him back from the edge of death.
“How cool it is in here,” Big Father said. “The wind is rising. Will it rain today? The rains are due, aren’t they? Let me see the sky. What color is the sky?” He looked upward in an odd straining way, as though the sky had risen to such a height that it could no longer be seen.
“Father,” Little Father said softly.
The old man glared. “You heard her, didn’t you? To the mosque! To the mosque and give thanks! Do you want Allah to think you’re an ingrate, boy?” He started coughing once again. Once again he began visibly to descend the curve of his precarious vitality. His withered cheeks began to grow mottled. There was a feeling of impending death in the air.
Servants and ministers and the three marabouts gathered by his side, alarmed.
“Big Father! Big Father!”
And then once more he was all right again, just as abruptly. He gestured fiercely, an unmistakable dismissal. The woman in purple gave Little Father a dark grin of triumph. Little Father nodded to her gallantly: this round was hers. He knelt at the Emir’s side, kissed his royal ring. It slipped about loosely on his shrunken finger. Little Father, thinking of nothing but the pressure of Selima’s dark, hard little nipples against the palms of his hands two hours before, made the prostration of filial devotion to his father and, with ferocious irony, to his stepmother, and backed quickly away from the royal presence.
Michael said, distraught, “I couldn’t sleep, sir. I went out for a walk.”
“And you walked the whole night long?” Sir Anthony asked, in a voice like a flail.
“I didn’t really notice the time. I just kept walking, and by and by the sun came up and I realized that the night was gone.”
“It’s your mind that’s gone, I think.” Sir Anthony, crooking his neck upward to Michael’s much greater height, gave him a whipcrack glare. “What kind of calf are you, anyway? Haven’t you any sense at all?”
“Sir Anthony, I don’t underst—”
“Are you in love? With the Turkish girl?”
Michael clapped his hand over his mouth in dismay.
“You know about that?” he said lamely, after a moment.
“One doesn’t have to be a mind-reader to see it, lad. Every camel in Timbuctoo knows it. The pathetic look on your face whenever she comes within fifty feet of you—the clownish way you shuffle your feet around, and hang your head—those occasional little groans of deepest melancholy—” The envoy glowered. He made no attempt to hide his anger, or his contempt. “By heaven, I’d like to hang your head, and all the rest of you as well. Have you no sense? Have you no sense whatsoever?”
Everything was lost, so what did anything matter? Defiantly Michael said, “Have you never fallen unexpectedly in love, Sir Anthony?”
“With a Turk?”
“Unexpectedly, I said. These things don’t necessarily happen with one’s political convenience in mind.”