His Majesty's Elephant (3 page)

“Of course,” he said. His long fingers had, one way and another, got rid of her veil. He started on the pins that held her braids. First one fell to her shoulders, then another. Then he loosened the heavy plaits, working them free of the ribbons that bound them.

Gisela never moved. Either he had her under a spell, or she had decided that he was not dangerous.

Gisela had always been an idiot. Rowan thought of arranging to fall out of the tree, but matters had not gone far enough for that. Yet.

At first Rowan did not realize that the Byzantine was singing. He sang softly, like the humming of bees and the sighing of wind in the leaves.

The words were in Greek, of which Rowan knew a little. They told her nothing, except that one of them was love.

Gisela sat as still as the tree, with her hair a silvery shimmer about her. Even from above she was astonishingly beautiful.

The song slid seamlessly into speech. “As lovely as you are,” he said, “only the most wonderful of jewels is worthy of you. Would that I were a king or a mighty mage, to lay the wealth of the world at your feet.”

“I have all that I need,” Gisela said.

“So fair a saint!” the Byzantine marveled. “And what if you chose but one jewel of all that are, one that itself is holy?”

Gisela's hand went to her breast where lay her golden cross. “I have it here,” she said, “in the sweet Christ's name.”

“Would you have another more holy yet?”

“There is no such thing,” Gisela said.

“Oh,” he said, “but there is.”

She must have widened her eyes. He tilted his head so that Rowan could see his smile, sweet and cloying. “There is one jewel,” he said, “of which you alone are worthy, to which you alone should be entitled. Unbelievers brought it from the East, from the Caliph of the infidels, but it is a purely Christian thing.”

Rowan's fingers locked on the branch beside her.

“A small thing,” he said, “a precious thing, a golden Talisman. A relic of the True Cross set in gold and crystal, wrought to hang about an empress' neck.”

“And where would I find such a thing?” Gisela asked.

“Where indeed?” said the Byzantine. “Is not your father the greatest of kings in the West? And is he not the boon companion of the infidel Caliph?”

“They've brought him a whole kingdom's worth of gifts,” said Gisela. “Even an elephant. But I haven't seen a relic of the True Cross.”

“Indeed,” the Byzantine said. “He received it quietly and hid it away quickly. He knows that it is not for him. If you should approach him, ask him for the gift that is your right...”

“But is it?” Gisela sat up straighter, and her voice was almost sharp. “Why would I want it, if my father has it?”

“For your beauty's sake,” the Byzantine answered promptly, “and for your soul's protection. It is a holy thing, this Talisman, and a strong one. Who knows? With it in your hands, you might succeed at last in persuading your father to let you go into your cloister.”

“Magic,” said Gisela. “You're talking about magic.”

“I am talking about a blessed relic, wood of the Tree on which Our Savior died.” He crossed himself devoutly, backwards, in the Byzantine fashion. “Your father thinks nothing of it. He keeps it locked away with the rest of his unconsidered treasures, gifts he has received but can make no use of, riches so profuse that they have ceased to matter at all. Why should the favorite of his daughters be lacking her soul's protection and her heart's desire, because he is not even aware that he has it?”

“And what do you know of my heart's desire?”

Shrewd, that question, and it took the Byzantine aback. Rowan could have told him that Gisela was like that. She never saw what was plain to see, except when she was not supposed to see it.

He recovered quickly. “I can't tell you that,” he said with purely mendacious candor. “A vow, the honor of a friend and kinsman... but there, I say too much. Do you wonder at all that this most Christian of relics should come to you from the hands of an infidel? It never began there. It will not, please God, end there.”

“It's yours?” Gisela asked almost eagerly. “You want it back?”

“Oh, no! It's never mine. If anyone has right to it, it is you. It was given to your father. It was made to protect a pure soul from the snares of temptation. He, may he live forever, is a mighty king, but purity of soul he has never had. You, on the other hand...”

“I'm a terrible sinner,” said Gisela. “Do you really think I deserve this relic?”

“More than any other,” the Byzantine said with fervor that rang suspiciously true.

“I don't know,” Gisela said. “It seems like vanity, somehow.”

Rowan could almost hear the Byzantine's teeth grinding. “Is it vanity to say a Paternoster? ‘And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' That is what this relic is. A prayer set in gold, with the wood of the Tree in its heart.”

Gisela clasped her hands to her breast. “Oh, yes. Yes, if you put it that way. It's not vanity at all; it's almost a sin to refuse.”

“So it is,” the Byzantine said. He did not quite manage to keep the satisfaction out of his tone.

“I'll ask my father tonight,” said Gisela. “He'll give it to me. He gives me anything I ask for.”

“Except what you desire most,” said the Byzantine.

“And with the relic, I'll pray that he may give me leave to go into the cloister.” Gisela stood up, taking no notice of the hair that tumbled down her back. “Oh, how I'll pray for that!”

After Gisela went away, the Byzantine lingered till Rowan nearly flung herself out of the tree to end the suspense. But he never looked up.

He smiled to himself and said something in Greek. Rowan was not sure she wanted to know what. She was remembering what people said about Byzantines. They were all sorcerers, and their Empress was the greatest sorceress of them all. And if one of them wanted a certain Talisman, a relic of the True Cross...

The Byzantine left still smiling. Rowan clung to her branch and shook. It was a long while before she was steady enough to climb down.

Once she was on the grass, her knees would barely hold her up. She sat for a while and tried to breathe. “I can't help it,” she said to the air, or maybe to her mother. “He probably means nothing. He wants a look at the Caliph's gift, that's all, or he honestly thinks Gisela should have it. Who knows how his people think? But I can't—I just can't—like a Byzantine. Or ever, ever trust one.”

No one in the world could. Everybody hated the Byzantines. That was why they were so powerful.

“That and magic,” Rowan said.

Maybe.

She made herself stand up.

It was easier once she started walking. Her feet led her through the stable, to the one part of it that was quiet. The part that housed the Elephant.

Everywhere else was humming. Where the Elephant was, there was no one, and no sound but the buzzing of flies and the soft enormous roar of the Elephant's breathing.

The Elephant seemed to be asleep. His keeper was nowhere that Rowan could see. She was glad.

The Elephant woke when she wavered on the edge of his tent, under the rolled-up awning. It was nothing very obvious; she simply knew that he was aware of her. She was not afraid. Fear was somewhere behind her.

The wise sad eye seemed to beckon. She approached slowly, ready to bolt if he made a move, but he only watched her.

She found herself right in front of him, close enough to touch. His skin looked rough, almost scaly, but it was soft, wrinkled like a very old woman's, and warm.

His trunk moved very slowly as if to assure her that it meant no harm, circling around her. It felt like a strong warm arm.

The great foreleg lifted in front of her. It looked like the step of a stair. His eye seemed to smile.

She set her foot on the Elephant's leg, and all at once the trunk was around her and she was rising, up to the place that God had made for a person to sit in: the hollow of the neck behind the broad soft flaps of the ears. She fit there as well as she did in her tree. The great domed head was in front of her, and the great arched back behind. She was higher than she had ever been on a horse.

She tried not to grip too hard and pinch. It was terrifying, but it was wonderful, to sit up here in the lofty shade, staring out at the sunlit world.

It did not quite make her forget why she was here. “They want something, those Byzantines,” she said to the Elephant. “And not just the Caliph's Talisman.”

But of course, said the voice in her head, which maybe was her mother, or maybe the Elephant, or maybe just her own common sense. The Empress of the East wanted to marry the Emperor of the West. She had sent her embassy to ask it—command it, some people said. The Empress of the East thought she was the ruler of the world and great Carl was just a barbarian, a rough uncivilized nobody who dared to call himself her equal.

“She blinded her own son,” Rowan said: “put out his eyes with a hot iron, so that she could be empress. What will she do to Father if she gets her hands on him?”

Carl was stronger than that. Had he not been holding off the terrible Empress for years, and taking the West for himself?

“But,” said Rowan, “that was before the Caliph's men came here. Before the Talisman.” She hated even to say the word, it troubled her so much. “And I don't know why!” she cried to the hot still air.

The Elephant did not move under her, though she could feel him listening: a bit of tension in his neck, a tilt of his ears as if to catch what she said. She patted his head in shaky apology.

“I don't know why,” she said more quietly. “I don't think he even remembers it. I've never seen him wear it. It's in a box somewhere, I suppose, with all the other things people give him because he's the Emperor.”

That would be like him, the air admitted. Carl never forgot anything that mattered, but little things went right out of his head.

“That Talisman isn't a little thing,” Rowan said. “It only looks like one.”

Maybe, the air suggested, Rowan was jealous because her father was thinking about marrying again, but he would let none of his daughters have a husband — because, he said, he loved them too much to let them go.

“What? Jealous of
her
?" Rowan almost laughed. “I'd rather be jealous of mating snakes. Although,” she said, “I do wish...”

That she could marry?

“Someday,” she said, “I'm going to. I promised myself. I'm going to be ordinary. I'm going to be happy. Happy is a house that's mine, a man who's mine, children—everything that a simple woman can have. Maybe I'll work myself to the bone. Father says women like that do. Maybe I'll be old and grey and toothless when I'm no older than Bertha. But I'll be happy.”

She looked down. It was a very long way to the ground. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and started sliding.

Something stopped her. She opened her eyes.

The Elephant's leg was lifted again, making its stair. She stepped down the last bit and put her arms around his trunk, and hugged carefully.

He hugged back. She smiled.

Her eyes were watery, God knew why. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

Rowan spun like a cat.

The Elephant's boy looked furious. “What are you doing? Get away from my Elephant!”

“
Your
Elephant?” Rowan came down off terror into pure rage. “And just who do you think you are?”

That stopped him.

“This is the Emperor's Elephant,” Rowan said. “I am the Emperor's daughter. Therefore—”

“What is this, a schoolroom?” Kerrec—Rowan would not have condescended to remember his name, but her memory was being fickle—Kerrec seemed to be able to stay in control of himself, even when he was in a temper. And he had not even blinked, let alone flinched, when she flung her rank in his face.

It was all intensely annoying. “You could have been hurt.”

“My lord Abul Abbas would never hurt me,” Rowan said. She was not going to tell Kerrec that she had ridden the Elephant; or at least sat on him. That would give the boy proper fits.

He snorted like one of the horses. “All you princesses are alike. Nothing in the world can touch you, because you're who you are. Haven't you ever heard what happens to pride that goes too far?”

“In Scripture,” said Rowan with just enough edge to be nasty, “it falls. In the Romans' books it makes the gods jealous. In Greece—”

He muttered something.

“What language is that?” she asked him.

He looked startled. Good. Men could never think of more than one thing at once: it gave them a headache. He blurted the answer before he could have thought. “Breton.”

“You're from Brittany?” That explained much, including his dark hawkish looks and his dreadful manners. “That was Count Roland's country. He died years before I was born, but everyone remembers him.”

Kerrec went stiff. For a moment Rowan thought he was going to hit her. His hands were knotted into fists, and his face looked like a fist itself, clenched tight.

Rowan kept talking. Babbling, really, but if she stopped, she did not know what would happen. “If you're a Breton, you know about magic, yes? Brittany has magic in its bones. But not the kind of magic that's in the East, so maybe it's not going to help. What the infidels have—what's in Byzantium—”

“What do you know of Byzantium?”

Rowan's teeth clicked together. This was absolute idiocy, but it kept coming out of her. The whole thing. The garden, Gisela, the Byzantine with his soft voice and his slithery ways.

It was Kerrec's face, she decided while her tongue went on. It was a thoroughly dislikable face, but not the way the Byzantine's was. That face made her want to hold tight to every secret. This one made her want to pry it open and let the light in, gather up the dry tinder that was inside and set it afire.