Zewditu’s self-denial was matched by generosity – socially required, an expression of pride and status as well as charity, but prodigal nonetheless. Hardly a month went by without a banquet given to soldiers, to clergy, to the nobility or the impoverished laity, and late one November, after Tsega had been in the capital for nearly two years, he was invited to one. The floor of the great hall was laid with hundreds of carpets, some of wool, others of silk. Guests filled the vast space, seated according to their rank: the empress, her regent and senior princes of the blood on a raised platform at one end, surrounded by curtains, then, when they had eaten, the curtains drawn back so they could look down at long low tables filled with lesser notables, ranks of clergy in high white turbans and glowing white shemmas, straight-backed soldiers. Crosses blinked in the lamplight, phalanxes of servants and slaves brought horns of mead and baskets piled high with injera. The smell of dark red chicken stew; of zign, beef in ginger and cardamom and bishop’s weed; the sight of entire sides of fresh-slaughtered oxen carried on poles balanced on the shoulders of slaves so anyone could take a knife and help themselves, made him ravenous, but he ate nothing at all.
Eventually one of the higher-ranking servants enquired why. ‘Because this is the day the Ark of the Covenant, captured by the Philistines, was returned by God,’ he replied. ‘I am fasting in celebration of Zion.’ The servant, knowing this was the kind of thing that interested Empress Zewditu, told her there was a priest in her hall observing the fast of Zion, and who therefore could not partake of the abundance of meat on offer.
She turned out to be observing it too. She had had fasting food cooked for her, pulses and vegetables rather than meat, and she sent the young priest a portion of it. When he had eaten he stood and addressed to her a qiné of praise he had composed in preparation for just such an eventuality, a poem playing upon the biblical echoes of her baptismal name and lauding her holy magnanimity. She inclined her head in thanks. ‘And what can I do for you?’
This was why he had come to the capital, the moment he had been working toward for years. ‘I would like to lead Ba’ata Mariam church in Gondar,’ he replied. ‘And I would like to rebuild it to the glory of God.’
‘Of course,’ she replied. And she ordered the provision of all the accoutrements the new aleqa would require: a cape worked over in gilt, a tunic with a wide coloured band embroidered at the hem, a sash; bags of Maria Theresa silver.
Half of Gondar, it seemed, came out to meet him, ululating praise of their new chief priest. Aleqa Tsega accepted the celebrations calmly, savouring his sudden leap above those who had denied him welcome, noting the practised tributes from his fellow clergy, the underlying silences, the curdled smiles.
At her aunt’s house a feast was waiting. There too he looked about him – at the told-you-so pleasure of Tirunesh, the reluctant approval of Mekonnen. At the narrow-hipped girl in black who hung back, shaven head held low.
THE SECOND MONTH
Sunny growing and ripening season. Honey removed from hives. The first barley threshed and winnowed for roasting and beer-making. Children play outdoor games; girls dance and greet storks arriving ‘from Jerusalem’.
She no longer hid as she had before he left, running to the storeroom, burrowing in among the wheat and split peas, the dusty green-smelling, crackling hops. Breathing shallow so no one could hear, crouching down behind a high basket or clay waterpot, willing herself invisible. If he found her he had chastised her, playfully. What, hiding again?
Now, nearly four years older, she did not hide, but still she retreated to the back rooms, to sit on a low stool among the comforting grains and watch the days crawl across the floor. She would have spent the nights there, if she could. She did not look up at him, or speak to him; even if she had been expected to, she could not.
When he was out the servants took charge, bossing her about the house like the child she still was, letting her help, yet refusing to play games with her because, being married, she was no longer a child. So she played alone, making a head from bunched-up cloth, a body from a dress, and rocking the form to sleep. Sometimes she heard children’s voices beyond the walls, whispering, calling – ‘coo-coo-loo!’ – and swallowed the voice that itched to answer.
Other times she sat at the window, craning for glimpses of life. Morose donkeys clopped by, or women doubled over beneath wide loads of firewood. Slaves with high packs balanced on their heads, nuns in yellow caps, children running errands. Once she saw a great lord riding in the direction of Ba’ata. His mule clashed and jingled with embellishments and the sun lit the dull barrel of a rifle. Retainers scurried to clear the way.
How handsome he was. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked the slave girl, who shook her head, and ran to see.
‘Ras Gugsa,’ she reported. Ras Gugsa. Their governor! From her father she knew she was distantly related to him, and even here, shut up among the servants, she had heard the rhymes and the gossip. He was pious, as required, a poet and a fair administrator, but somewhat hidebound, too, and a melancholy and determined drinker. He had been married to the empress, who, it was said, still loved him, but they had been forced to separate when she was crowned; it was no secret he blamed his loss of power on the regent. Just over a year later he would be tricked into battle against Ras Tafari and die on the fields of Anchem, his soldiers having scattered in fear of the regent’s most recent toy, the aeroplane. But for now he carried all the sheen of high office.
When they were first married her husband had hired a blind abba to lead her, singing, through the alphabet, the set texts of early church school, the psalms her mother had hummed to her. She found the abba kind, loving, but soon he was reporting that she was too impressionable, too prone to tears. And too quick to learn, too. ‘If you correct her or do her wrong,’ he said to her husband, ‘she will quote David at you. She will cry to God and God will listen to her. Do not teach her to read.’ So the lessons stopped, and she sat out her hours spinning thread from tight bolls of cotton, twisting coloured yarn around narrow bundles of straw to make serving baskets, or picking crumbs of dark earth out of quintal after quintal of wheat kernels, lentils, teff.
Sometimes, still, in a sudden access of spirit, she would run to the neighbours’, climb up into their peach tree, fill her skirts with the biggest fruits she could find, and slink back to enjoy them. Once she left the main door open by accident. A sheep had just been slaughtered and a dog crept in and got hold of one of the back legs. Heart thumping so hard it seemed it might deafen her, she managed to startle the animal into dropping it.
Other times she acted willingly enough in the play that had been written for her. Not that she necessarily knew the words, or her exits and her entrances. So at harvest time, after the peasants had delivered their tithes – two-thirds of the barley and wheat from the Jews who farmed at Gonderoch Mariam, the smaller church her husband administered; chickpeas and chilli peppers, peas and broad beans and teff from Ba’ata’s lands in Dembiya and Bisnit – she handed skiffs of wheat and barley, balls of butter, strips of beef jerky and cobs of corn out to anyone who looked as if they needed it. There was so much she felt it wouldn’t be missed.
Or guests dropped by. ‘Where’s your father?’ Sometimes she could not help but laugh. ‘Oh, you’re mistress here!’ By the time she turned twelve she was becoming accustomed to being called