Lion Time in Timbuctoo

In the dry stifling days of early summer the Emir lay dying, the king, the imam, Big Father of the Songhay, in his cool dark mud-walled palace in the Sankore quarter of Old Timbuctoo. The city seemed frozen, strange though it was to think of freezing in this season of killing heat that fell upon you like a wall of hot iron. There was a vast stasis, as though everything were entombed in ice. The river was low and sluggish, moving almost imperceptibly in its bed with scarcely more vigor than a sick weary crocodile. No one went out of doors, no one moved indoors, everyone sat still, waiting for the old man’s death and praying that it would bring the cooling rains.

In his own very much lesser palace alongside the Emir’s, Little Father sat still like all the rest, watching and waiting. His time was coming now at last. That was a sobering thought. How long had he been the prince of the realm? Twenty years? Thirty? He had lost count. And now finally to rule, now to be the one who cast the omens and uttered the decrees and welcomed the caravans and took the high seat in the Great Mosque. So much toil, so much responsibility: but the Emir was not yet dead. Not yet. Not quite.

“Little Father, the ambassadors are arriving.”

In the arched doorway stood Ali Pasha, bowing, smiling. The vizier’s face, black as ebony, gleamed with sweat, a dark moon shining against the lighter darkness of the vestibule. Despite his name, Ali Pasha was pure Songhay, black as sorrow, blacker by far than Little Father, whose blood was mixed with that of would-be conquerors of years gone by. The aura of the power that soon would be his was glistening and crackling around Ali Pasha’s head like midwinter lightning: for Ali Pasha was the future Grand Vizier, no question of it. When Little Father became king, the old Emir’s officers would resign and retire. An Emir’s ministers did not hold office beyond his reign. In an earlier time they would have been lucky to survive the old Emir’s death at all.

Little Father, fanning himself sullenly, looked up to meet his vizier’s insolent grin.

“Which ambassadors, Ali Pasha?”

“The special ones, here to attend Big Father’s funeral. A Turkish. A Mexican. A Russian. And an English.”

“An English? Why an English?”

“They are a very proud people, now. Since their independence. How could they stay away? This is a very important death, Little Father.”

“Ah. Ah, of course.” Little Father contemplated the fine wooden Moorish grillwork that bedecked the doorway. “Not a Peruvian?”

“A Peruvian will very likely come on the next riverboat, Little Father. And a Maori one, and they say a Chinese. There will probably be others also. By the end of the week the city will be filled with dignitaries. This is the most important death in some years.”

“A Chinese,” Little Father repeated softly, as though Ali Pasha had said an ambassador from the Moon was coming. A Chinese! But yes, yes, this was a very important death. The Songhay Empire was no minor nation. Songhay controlled the crossroads of Africa; all caravans journeying between desert north and tropical south must pass through Songhay. The Emir of Songhay was one of the grand kings of the world.

Ali Pasha said acidly, “The Peruvian hopes that Big Father will last until the rains come, I suppose. And so he takes his time getting here. They are people of a high country, these Peruvians. They aren’t accustomed to our heat.”

“And if he misses the funeral entirely, waiting for the rains to come?”

Ali Pasha shrugged. “Then he’ll learn what heat really is, eh, Little Father? When he goes home to his mountains and tells the Grand Inca that he didn’t get here soon enough, eh?” He made a sound that was something like a laugh, and Little Father, experienced in his vizier’s sounds, responded with a gloomy smile.

“Where are these ambassadors now?”

“At Kabara, at the port hostelry. Their riverboat has just come in. We’ve sent the royal barges to bring them here.”

“Ah. And where will they stay?”

“Each at his country’s embassy, Little Father.”

“Of course. Of course. So no action is needed from me at this time concerning these ambassadors, eh, Ali Pasha?”

“None, Little Father.” After a pause the vizier said, “The Turk has brought his daughter. She is very handsome.” This with a rolling of the eyes, a baring of the teeth. Little Father felt a pang of appetite, as Ali Pasha had surely intended. The vizier knew his prince very well, too. “Very handsome, Little Father! In a white way, you understand.”

“I understand. The English, did he bring a daughter too?”

“Only the Turk,” said Ali Pasha.

“Do you remember the Englishwoman who came here once?” Little Father asked.

“How could I forget? The hair like strands of fine gold. The breasts like milk. The pale pink nipples. The belly-hair down below, like fine gold also.”

Little Father frowned. He had spoken often enough to Ali Pasha about the Englishwoman’s milky breasts and pale pink nipples. But he had no recollection of having described to him or to anyone else the golden hair down below. A rare moment of carelessness, then, on Ali Pasha’s part; or else a bit of deliberate malice, perhaps a way of testing Little Father. There were risks in that for Ali Pasha, but surely Ali Pasha knew that. At any rate it was a point Little Father chose not to pursue just now. He sank back into silence, fanning himself more briskly.

Ali Pasha showed no sign of leaving. So there must be other news.

The vizier’s glistening eyes narrowed. “I hear they will be starting the dancing in the marketplace very shortly.”

Little Father blinked. Was there some crisis in the king’s condition, then? Which everyone knew about but him?

“The death dance, do you mean?”

“That would be premature, Little Father,” said Ali Pasha unctuously. “It is the life dance, of course.”

“Of course. I should go to it, in that case.”

“In half an hour. They are only now assembling the formations. You should go to your father, first.”

“Yes. So I should. To the Emir, first, to ask his blessing; and then to the dance.”

Little Father rose.

“The Turkish girl,” he said. “How old is she, Ali Pasha?”

“She might be eighteen. She might be twenty.”

“And handsome, you say?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, very handsome, Little Father!”

There was an underground passageway connecting Little Father’s palace to that of Big Father; but suddenly, whimsically, Little Father chose to go there by the out-of-doors way. He had not been out of doors in two or three days, since the worst of the heat had descended on the city. Now he felt the outside air hit him like the blast of a furnace as he crossed the courtyard and stepped into the open. The whole city was like a smithy these days, and would be for weeks and weeks more, until the rains came. He was used to it, of course, but he had never come to like it. No one ever came to like it except the deranged and the very holy, if indeed there was any difference between the one and the other.

Emerging onto the portico of his palace, Little Father looked out on the skyline of flat mud roofs before him, the labyrinth of alleys and connecting passageways, the towers of the mosques, the walled mansions of the nobility. In the hazy distance rose the huge modern buildings of the New City. It was late afternoon, but that brought no relief from the heat. The air was heavy, stagnant, shimmering. It vibrated like a live thing. All day long the myriad whitewashed walls had been soaking up the heat, and now they were beginning to give it back.

Atop the vibration of the air lay a second and almost tangible vibration, the tinny quivering sound of the musicians tuning up for the dance in the marketplace. The life dance, Ali Pasha had said. Perhaps so; but Little Father would not be surprised to find some of the people dancing the death dance as well, and still others dancing the dance of the changing of the king. There was little linearity of time in Old Timbuctoo; everything tended to happen at once. The death of the old king and the ascent of the new one were simultaneous affairs, after all: they were one event. In some countries, Little Father knew, they used to kill the king when he grew sick and feeble, simply to hurry things along. Not here, though. Here they danced him out, danced the new king in. This was a civilized land. An ancient kingdom, a mighty power in the world. He stood for a time, listening to the music in the marketplace, wondering if his father in his sickbed could hear it, and what he might be thinking, if he could. And he wondered too how it would feel when his own time came to lie abed listening to them tuning up in the market for the death dance. But then Little Father’s face wrinkled in annoyance at his own foolishness. He would rule for many years; and when the time came to do the death dance for him out there he would not care at all. He might even be eager for it.

Big Father’s palace rose before him like a mountain. Level upon level sprang upward, presenting a dazzling white facade broken only by the dark butts of the wooden beams jutting through the plaster and the occasional grillwork of a window. His own palace was a hut compared with that of the Emir. Implacable blue-veiled Tuareg guards stood in the main doorway. Their eyes and foreheads, all that was visible of their coffee-colored faces, registered surprise as they saw Little Father approaching, alone and on foot, out of the aching sunblink of the afternoon; but they stepped aside. Within, everything was silent and dark. Elderly officials of the almost-late Emir lined the hallways, grieving soundlessly, huddling into their own self-pity. They looked toward Little Father without warmth, without hope, as he moved past them. In a short while he would be king, and they would be nothing. But he wasted no energy on pitying them. It wasn’t as though they would be fed to the royal lions in the imperial pleasure-ground, after all, when they stepped down from office. Soft retirements awaited them. They had had their greedy years at the public trough; when the time came for them to go, they would move along to villas in Spain, in Greece, in the south of France, in chilly remote Russia, even, and live comfortably on the fortunes they had embezzled during Big Father’s lengthy reign. Whereas he, he, he, he was doomed to spend all his days in this wretched blazing city of mud, scarcely even daring ever to go abroad for fear they would take his throne from him while he was gone.

The Grand Vizier, looking twenty years older than he had seemed when Little Father had last seen him a few days before, greeted him formally at the head of the Stairs of Allah and said, “The imam your father is resting on the porch, Little Father. Three saints and one of the Tijani are with him.”

“Three saints? He must be very near the end, then!”

“On the contrary. We think he is rallying.”

“Allah let it be so,” said Little Father.

Servants and ministers were everywhere. The place reeked of incense. All the lamps were lit, and they were flickering wildly in the conflicting currents of the air within the palace, heat from outside meeting the cool of the interior in gusting wafts. The old Emir had never cared much for electricity.

Little Father passed through the huge, musty, empty throne room, bedecked with his father’s hunting trophies, the 20-foot-long crocodile skin, the superb white oryx head with horns like scimitars, the hippo skulls, the vast puzzled-looking giraffe. The rich gifts from foreign monarchs were arrayed here too, the hideous Aztec idol that King Moctezuma had sent a year or two ago, the brilliant feather cloaks from the Inca Capac Yupanqui of Peru, the immense triple-paneled gilded painting of some stiff-jointed Christian holy men with which the Czar Vladimir had paid his respects during a visit of state a decade back, and the great sphere of ivory from China on which some master craftsman had carved a detailed map of the world, and much more, enough to fill half a storehouse. Little Father wondered if he would be able to clear all this stuff out when he became Emir.

In his lifetime Big Father had always preferred to hold court on his upstairs porch, rather than in this dark, cluttered, and somehow sinister throne room; and now he was doing his dying on the porch as well. It was a broad square platform, open to the skies but hidden from the populace below, for it was at the back of the palace facing toward the distant river and no one in the city could look into it.

The dying king lay swaddled, despite the great heat, in a tangle of brilliant blankets of scarlet and turquoise and lemoncolored silk on a rumpled divan to Little Father’s left. He was barely visible, a pale sweaty wizened face and nothing more, amid the rumpled bedclothes. To the right was the royal roof-garden, a mysterious collection of fragrant exotic trees and shrubs planted in huge square porcelain vessels from Japan, another gift of the bountiful Czar. The dark earth that filled those blue-and-white tubs had been carried in panniers by donkeys from the banks of the Niger, and the plants were watered every evening at sunset by prisoners, who had to haul great leather sacks of immense weight to this place and were forbidden by the palace guards to stumble or complain. Between the garden and the divan was the royal viewing-pavilion, a low structure of rare satin-smooth woods upon which the Emir in better days would sit for hours, staring out at the barren sun-hammered sandy plain, the pale tormented sky, the occasional wandering camel or hyena, the gnarled scrubby bush that marked the path of the river, six or seven miles away. The cowrie-studded ebony scepter of high office was lying abandoned on the floor of the pavilion, as though nothing more than a cast-off toy.

Four curious figures stood now at the foot of the Emir’s divan. One was the Tijani, a member of the city’s chief fraternity of religious laymen. He was a man of marked Arab features, dressed in a long white robe over droopy yellow pantaloons, a red turban, a dozen or so strings of amber beads. Probably he was a well-to-do merchant or shopkeeper in daily life. He was wholly absorbed in his orisons, rocking back and forth in place, crooning indefatigably to his hundred-beaded rosary, working hard to efface the Emir’s sins and make him fit for Paradise. His voice was thin as feathers from overuse, a low eroded murmur that scarcely halted even for breath. He acknowledged Little Father’s arrival with the merest flick of an eyebrow, without pausing in his toil.

The other three holy men were marabouts, living saints, two black Songhay and a man of mixed blood. They were weighted down with leather packets of grigri charms hanging in thick mounds around their necks and girded by other charms by the dozen around their wrists and hips, and they had the proper crazy glittering saint-look in their eyes, the true holy baraka. It was said that saints could fly, could raise the dead, could make the rains come and the rivers rise. Little Father doubted all of that, but he was one who tended to keep his doubts to himself. In any case the city was full of such miracle-workers, dozens of them, and the tombs of hundreds more were objects of veneration in the poorer districts. Little Father recognized all three of these: he had seen them now and then hovering around the Sankore Mosque or sometimes the other and greater one at Dyingerey Ber, striking saint-poses on one leg or with arms outflung, muttering saint-gibberish, giving passersby the saint-stare. Now they stood lined up in grim silence before the Emir, making cryptic gestures with their fingers. Even before Big Father had fallen ill, these three had gone about declaring that he was doomed shortly to be taken by a vampire, as various recent omens indisputably proved—a flight of owls by day, a flight of vultures by night, the death of a sacred dove that lived on the minaret of the Great Mosque. For them to be in the palace at all was remarkable; for them to be in the presence of the king was astounding. Someone in the royal entourage must be at the point of desperation, Little Father concluded.

He knelt at the bedside.

“Father?”

The Emir’s eyes were glassy. Perhaps he was becoming a saint too.

“Father, it’s me. They said you were rallying. I know you’re going to be all right soon.”

Was that a smile? Was that any sort of reaction at all?

“Father, it’ll be cooler in just a few weeks. The rains are already on the way. Everybody’s saying so. You’ll feel better when the rains come.”

The old man’s cheeks were like parchment. His bones were showing through. He was eighty years old and he had been Emir of Songhay for fifty of those years. Electricity hadn’t even been invented when he became king, nor the motorcar. Even the railroad had been something new and startling.

There was a claw-like hand suddenly jutting out of the blankets. Little Father touched it. It was like touching a piece of worn leather. By the time the rains had reached Timbuctoo, Big Father would have made the trip by ceremonial barge to the old capital of Gao, two hundred miles down the Niger, to take his place in the royal cemetery of the Kings of Songhay.

Little Father went on murmuring encouragement for another few moments, but it was apparent that the Emir wasn’t listening. A stray burst of breeze brought the sound of the marketplace music, growing louder now. Could he hear that? Could he hear anything? Did he care? After a time Little Father rose, and went quickly from the palace.

In the marketplace the dancing had already begun. They had shoved aside the booths of the basket-weavers and the barbers and the slipper-makers and the charm-peddlers, the dealers in salt and fruit and donkeys and rice and tobacco and meat, and a frenetic procession of dancers was weaving swiftly back and forth across the central square from the place of the milk vendors at the south end to the place of the wood vendors at the north when Little Father and Ali Pasha arrived.

“You see?” Ali Pasha asked. “The life dance. They bring the energy down from the skies to fill your father’s veins.”

There was tremendous energy in it, all right. The dancers pounded the sandy earth with their bare feet, they clapped their hands, they shouted quick sharp punctuations of wordless sound, they made butting gestures with their outflung elbows, they shook their heads convulsively and sent rivers of sweat flying through the air. The heat seemed to mean nothing to them. Their skins gleamed. Their eyes were bright as new coins. They made rhythmic grunting noises, oom oom oom, and the whole city seemed to shake beneath their tread.

To Little Father it looked more like the death dance than the dance of life. There was the frenzied stomp of mourning about it. But he was no expert on these things. The people had all sorts of beliefs that were mysteries to him, and which he hoped would melt away like snowflakes during his coming reign. Did they still put pressure on Allah to bring the rains by staking small children out in the blazing sun for days at a time outside the tombs of saints? Did they still practice alchemy on one another, turning wrapping paper into banknotes by means of spells? Did they continue to fret about vampires and djinn? It was all very embarrassing. Songhay was a modern state; and yet there was all this medieval nonsense still going on. Very likely the old Emir had liked it that way. But soon things would change.

The close formation of the dancers opened abruptly, and to his horror Little Father saw a group of foreigners standing in a little knot at the far side of the marketplace. He had only a glimpse of them; then the dance closed again and the foreigners were blocked from view. He touched Ali Pasha’s arm.

“Did you see them?”

“Oh, yes. Yes!”

“Who are they, do you think?”

The vizier stared off intently toward the other side of the marketplace, as though his eyes were capable of seeing through the knot of dancers.

“Embassy people, Little Father. Some Mexicans, I believe, and perhaps the Turks. And those fair-haired people must be the English.”

Here to gape at the quaint tribal dances, enjoying the fine barbaric show in the extravagant alien heat.

“You said they were coming by barge. How’d they get here so fast?”

Ali Pasha shook his head.

“They must have taken the motorboat instead, I suppose.”

“I can’t receive them here, like this. I never would have come here if I had known that they’d be here.”

“Of course not, Little Father.”

“You should have told me!”

“I had no way of knowing,” said Ali Pasha, and for once he sounded sincere, even distressed. “There will be punishments for this. But come, Little Father. Come: to your palace. As you say, they ought not find you here this way, without a retinue, without your regalia. This evening you can receive them properly.”

Very likely the newly arrived diplomats at the upper end of the marketplace had no idea that they had been for a few moments in the presence of the heir to the throne, the future Emir of Songhay, one of the six or seven most powerful men in Africa. If they had noticed anyone at all across the way, they would simply have seen a slender, supple, just-barely-still-youngish man with Moorish features, wearing a simple white robe and a flat red skullcap, standing beside a tall, powerfully built black man clad in an ornately brocaded robe of purple and yellow. The black man might have seemed more important to them in the Timbuctoo scheme of things than the Moorish-looking one, though they would have been wrong about that.

But probably they hadn’t been looking toward Little Father and Ali Pasha at all. Their attention was on the dancers. That was why they had halted here, en route from the river landing to their various embassies.

“How tireless they are!” Prince Itzcoatl said. The Mexican envoy, King Moctezuma’s brother. “Why don’t their bones melt in this heat?” He was a compact copper-colored man decked out grandly in an Aztec feather cape, golden anklets and wristlets, a gold headband studded with brilliant feathers, golden ear-plugs and nose-plugs. “You’d think they were glad their king is dying, seeing them jump around like that.”

“Perhaps they are,” observed the Turk, Ismet Akif.

He laughed in a mild, sad way. Everything about him seemed to be like that, mild and sad: his droopy-lidded melancholic eyes, his fleshy downcurved lips, his sloping shoulders, even the curiously stodgy and inappropriate European-style clothes that he had chosen to wear in this impossible climate, the dark heavy woolen suit, the narrow gray necktie. But wide cheekbones and a broad, authoritative forehead indicated his true strength to those with the ability to see such things. He too was of royal blood, Sultan Osman’s third son. There was something about him that managed to be taut and slack both at once, no easy task. His posture, his expression, the tone of his voice, all conveyed the anomalous sense of self that came from being the official delegate of a vast empire which—as all the world knew—had passed the peak of its greatness some time back and was launched on a long irreversible decline. To the diminutive Englishman at his side he said, “How does it seem to you, Sir Anthony? Are they grieving or celebrating?”

Everyone in the group understood the great cost of the compliment Ismet Akif was paying by amiably addressing his question to the English ambassador, just as if they were equals. It was high courtesy: it was grace in defeat.

Turkey still ruled a domain spanning thousands of miles. England was an insignificant island kingdom. Worse yet, England had been a Turkish province from medieval times onward, until only sixty years before. The exasperated English, weary of hundreds of years of speaking Turkish and bowing to Mecca, finally had chased out their Ottoman masters in the first year of what by English reckoning was the twentieth century, thus becoming the first of all the European peoples to regain their independence. There were no Spaniards here today, no Italians, no Portuguese, and no reason why there should be, for their countries all still were Turkish provinces. Perhaps envoys from those lands would show up later to pay homage to the dead Emir, if only to make some pathetic display of tattered sovereignty; but it would not matter to anyone else, one way or the other. The English, though, were beginning once again to make their way in the world, a little tentatively but nevertheless visibly. And so Ismet Akif had had to accommodate himself to the presence of an English diplomat on the slow journey upriver from the coast to the Songhay capital, and everyone agreed he had managed it very well.

Sir Anthony said, “Both celebrating and grieving, I’d imagine.” He was a precise, fastidious little man with icy blue eyes, an angular bony face, a tight cap of red curls beginning to shade now into gray. “The king is dead, long live the king—that sort of thing.”

“Almost dead,” Prince Itzcoatl reminded him.

“Quite. Terribly awkward, our getting here before the fact. Or are we here before the fact?” Sir Anthony glanced toward his young charge-d’affaires. “Have you heard anything, Michael? Is the old Emir still alive, do you know?”

Michael was long-legged, earnest, milky-skinned, very fair. In the merciless Timbuctoo sunlight his golden hair seemed almost white. The first blush of what was likely to be a very bad sunburn was spreading over his cheeks and forehead. He was twenty-four and this was his first notable diplomatic journey.

He indicated the flagpole at the eastern end of the plaza, where the black and red Songhay flag hung like a dead thing high overhead.

“They’d have lowered the flag if he’d died, Sir Anthony.”

“Quite. Quite. They do that sort of thing here, do they?”

“I’d rather expect so, sir.”

“And then what? The whole town plunged into mourning? Drums, chanting? The new Emir paraded in the streets? Everyone would head for the mosques, I suppose.” Sir Anthony glanced at Ismet Akif. “We would too, eh? Well, I could stand to go into a mosque one more time, I suppose.”

After the Conquest, when London had become New Istanbul, the worship of Allah had been imposed by law. Westminster Abbey had been turned into a mosque, and the high pashas of the occupation forces were buried in it alongside the Plantagenet kings. Later the Turks had built the great golden-domed Mosque of Ali on the Strand, opposite the Grand Palace of Sultan Mahmud. To this day perhaps half the English still embraced Islam, out of force of habit if nothing else, and Turkish was still heard in the streets nearly as much as English. The conquerors had had five hundred years to put their mark on England, and that could not be undone overnight. But Christianity was fashionable again among the English well-to-do, and had never really been relinquished by the poor, who had kept their underground chapels through the worst of the Islamic persecutions. And it was obligatory for the members of the governing class.

“It would have been better for us all,” said Ismet Akif gravely, “if we had not had to set out so early that we would arrive here before the Emir’s death. But of course the distances are so great, and travel is so very slow—”

“And the situation so explosive,” Prince Itzcoatl said.

Unexpectedly Ismet Akif’s bright-eyed daughter Selima, who was soft-spoken and delicate-looking and was not thought to be particularly forward, said, “Are you talking about the possibility that King Suleiyman of Mali might send an invasion force into Songhay when the old man finally dies?”

Everyone swung about to look at her. Someone gasped and someone else choked back shocked laughter. She was extremely young and of course she was female, but even so the remark was exceedingly tactless, exceedingly embarrassing. The girl had not come to Songhay in any official capacity, merely as her father’s traveling companion, for he was a widower. The whole trip was purely an adventure for her. All the same, a diplomat’s child should have had more sense. Ismet Akif turned his eyes inward and looked as though he would like to sink into the earth. But Selima’s dark eyes glittered with something very much like mischief. She seemed to be enjoying herself. She stood her ground.

“No,” she said. “We can’t pretend it isn’t likely. There’s Mali, right next door, controlling the coast. It stands to reason that they’d like to have the inland territory too, and take total control of West African trade. King Suleiyman could argue that Songhay would be better off as part of Mali than it is this way, a landlocked country.”

“My dear—”

“And the prince,” she went on imperturbably, “is supposed to be just an idler, isn’t he, a silly dissolute playboy who’s spent so many years waiting around to become Emir that he’s gone completely to ruin. Letting him take the throne would be a mistake for everybody. So this is the best possible time for Mali to move in and consolidate the two countries. You all see that. That’s why we’re here, aren’t we, to stare the Malians down and keep them from trying it? Because they’d be too strong for the other powers’ comfort if they got together with the Songhayans. And it’s all too likely to happen. After all, Mali and Songhay have been consolidated before.”

“Hundreds of years ago,” said Michael gently. He gave her a great soft blue-eyed stare of admiration and despair. “The principle that the separation of Mali and Songhay is desirable and necessary has been understood internationally since—”

“Please,” Ismet Akif said. “This is an unfortunate discussion. My dear, we ought not indulge in such speculations in a place of this sort, or anywhere else, let me say. Perhaps it’s time to continue on to our lodgings, do you not all agree?”

“A good idea. The dancing is becoming a little repetitious,” Prince Itzcoatl said.

“And the heat—” Sir Anthony said. “This unthinkable diabolical heat—”

They looked at each other. They shook their heads, and exchanged small smiles.

Prince Itzcoatl said quietly to Sir Anthony, “An unfortunate discussion, yes.”

“Very unfortunate.”

Then they all moved on, in groups of two and three, their porters trailing a short distance behind bowed under the great mounds of luggage. Michael stood for a moment or two peering after the retreating form of Selima Akif in an agony of longing and chagrin. Her movements seemed magical. They were as subtle as Oriental music: an exquisite semitonal slither, an enchanting harmonious twang.

The love he felt for her had surprised and mortified him when it had first blossomed on the riverboat as it came interminably up the Niger from the coast, and here in his first hour in Timbuctoo he felt it almost as a crucifixion. There was no worse damage he could do to himself than to fall in love with a Turk. For an Englishman it was virtual treason. His diplomatic career would be ruined before it had barely begun. He would be laughed out of court. He might just as well convert to Islam, paint his face brown, and undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca. And live thereafter as an anchorite in some desert cave, imploring the favor of the Prophet.

“Michael?” Sir Anthony called. “Is anything wrong?”

“Coming, sir. Coming!”

The reception hall was long and dark and cavernous, lit only by wax tapers that emitted a smoky amber light and a peculiar odor, something like that of leaves decomposing on a forest floor. Along the walls were bowers of interwoven ostrich and peacock plumes, and great elephant tusks set on brass pedestals rose from the earthen floor like obelisks at seemingly random intervals. Songhayans who might have been servants or just as easily high officials of the court moved among the visiting diplomats bearing trays of cool lime-flavored drinks, musty wine, and little delicacies fashioned from a bittersweet red nut.

The prince, in whose name the invitations had gone forth, was nowhere in sight so far as any of the foreigners could tell. The apparent host of the reception was a burly jet-black man of regal bearing clad in a splendid tawny robe that might actually have been made of woven lionskins. He had introduced himself as Ali Pasha, vizier to the prince. The prince, he explained, was at his father’s bedside, but would be there shortly. The prince was deeply devoted to his father, said Ali Pasha; he visited the failing Emir constantly.

“I saw that man in the marketplace this afternoon,” Selima said. “He was wearing a purple and yellow robe then. Down at the far side, beyond the dancers, for just a moment. He was looking at us. I thought he was magnificent, somebody of great importance. And he is.”

A little indignantly Michael said, “These blacks all look alike to me. How can you be sure that’s the one you saw?”

“Because I’m sure. Do all Turks look alike to you too?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“All English look alike to us, you know. We can just about distinguish between the red-haired ones and the yellow-haired ones. And that’s as far as it goes.”

“You aren’t serious, Selima.”

“No. No, I’m not. I actually can tell one of you from another most of the time. At least I can tell the handsome ones from the ugly ones.”

Michael flushed violently, so that his already sunburned face turned flaming scarlet and emanated great waves of heat. Everyone had been telling him how handsome he was since his boyhood. It was as if there was nothing to him at all except regularly formed features and pale flawless skin and long athletic limbs. The notion made him profoundly uncomfortable.

She laughed. “You should cover your face when you’re out in the sun. You’re starting to get cooked. Does it hurt very much?”

“Not at all. Can I get you a drink?”

“You know that alcohol is forbidden to—”

“The other kind, I mean. The green soda. It’s very good, actually. Boy! Boy!”

“I’d rather have the nut thing,” she said. She stretched forth one hand—her hand was very small, and the fingers were pale and perfect—and made the tiniest of languid gestures. Two of the black men with trays came toward her at once, and, laughing prettily, she scooped a couple of the nut-cakes from the nearer of the trays. She handed one to Michael, who fumbled it and let it fall. Calmly she gave him the other. He looked at it as though she had handed him an asp.

“Are you afraid I’ve arranged to have you poisoned?” she asked. “Go on. Eat it! It’s good! Oh, you’re so absurd, Michael! But I do like you.”

“We aren’t supposed to like each other, you know,” he said bleakly.

“I know that. We’re enemies, aren’t we?”

“Not any more, actually. Not officially.”

“Yes, I know. The Empire recognized English independence a good many years ago.”

The way she said it, it was like a slap. Michael’s reddened cheeks blazed fiercely.

In anguish he crammed the nut-cake into his mouth with both hands.

She went on, “I can remember the time when I was a girl and King Richard came to Istanbul to sign the treaty with the Sultan. There was a parade.”

“Yes. Yes. A great occasion.”

“But there’s still bad blood between the Empire and England. We haven’t forgiven you for some of the things you did to our people in your country in Sultan Abdul’s time, when we were evacuating.”

“You haven’t forgiven us—?”

“When you burned the bazaar. When you bombed that mosque. The broken shopwindows. We were going away voluntarily, you know. You were much more violent toward us than you had any right to be.”

“You speak very directly, don’t you?”

“There were atrocities. I studied them in school.”

“And when you people conquered us in l490? Were you gentle then?” For a moment Michael’s eyes were hot with fury, the easily triggered anger of the good Englishman for the bestial Turk. Appalled, he tried to stem the rising surge of patriotic fervor before it ruined everything. He signalled frantically to one of the tray-wielders, as though another round of nut-cakes might serve to get the conversation into a less disagreeable track. “But never mind all that, Selima. We mustn’t be quarreling over ancient history like this.” Somehow he mastered himself, swallowing, breathing deeply, managing an earnest smile. “You say you like me.”

“Yes. And you like me. I can tell.”

“Is that all right?”

“Of course it is, silly. Although I shouldn’t allow it. We don’t even think of you English as completely civilized.” Her eyes glowed. He began to tremble, and tried to conceal it from her. She was playing with him, he knew, playing a game whose rules she herself had defined and would not share with him. “Are you a Christian?” she asked.

“You know I am.”

“Yes, you must be. You used the Christian date for the year of the conquest of England. But your ancestors were Moslem, right?”

“Outwardly, during the time of the occupation. Most of us were. But for all those centuries we secretly continued to maintain our faith in—” She was definitely going to get him going again. Already his head was beginning to pound. Her beauty was unnerving enough; but this roguishness was more than he could take. He wondered how old she was. Eighteen? Nineteen? No more than that, surely. Very likely she had a fiancee back in Istanbul, some swarthy mustachioed fez-wearing Ottoman princeling, with whom she indulged in unimaginable Oriental perversions and to whom she confessed every little flirtation she undertook while traveling with her father. It was humiliating to think of becoming an item of gossip in some perfumed boudoir on the banks of the Bosporus. A sigh escaped him. She gave him a startled look, as though he had mooed at her. Perhaps he had. Desperately he sought for something, anything, that would rescue him from this increasingly tortured moment of impossible intimacy; and, looking across the room, he was astounded to find his eyes suddenly locked on those of the heir apparent to the throne of Songhay. “Ah, there he is,” Michael said in vast relief. “The prince has arrived.”

“Which one? Where?”

“The slender man. The red velvet tunic.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. Him. I saw him in the marketplace too, with Ali Pasha. Now I understand. They came to check us out before we knew who they were.” Selima smiled disingenuously. “He’s very attractive, isn’t he? Rather like an Arab, I’d say. And not nearly as dissolute-looking as I was led to expect. Is it all right if I go over and say hello to him? Or should I wait for a proper diplomatic introduction? I’ll ask my father, I think. Do you see him? Oh, yes, there he is over there, talking to Prince Itzcoatl—” She began to move away without a backward look.

Michael felt a sword probing in his vitals.

“Boy!” he called, and one of the blacks turned to him with a somber grin. “Some of that wine, if you please!”

On the far side of the room Little Father smiled and signalled for a drink also—not the miserable palm wine, which he abhorred and which as a good Moslem he should abjure anyway, but the clear fiery brandy that the caravans brought him from Tunis, and which to an outsider’s eyes would appear to be mere water. His personal cupbearer, who served no one else in the room, poured until he nodded, and slipped back into the shadows to await the prince’s next call.

In the first moments of his presence at the reception Little Father had taken in the entire scene, sorting and analyzing and comprehending. The Turkish ambassador’s daughter was even more beautiful than Ali Pasha had led him to think, and there was an agreeable slyness about her that Little Father was able to detect even at a distance. Lust awoke in him at once and he allowed himself a little smile as he savored its familiar throbbing along the insides of his thighs. The Turkish girl was very fine. The tall fair-haired young man, probably some sort of subsidiary English official, was obviously and stupidly in love with her. He should be advised to keep out of the sun. The Aztec prince, all done up in feathers and gold, was arrogant and brutal and smart, as Aztecs usually were. The Turk, the girl’s father, looked soft and effete and decadent, which he probably found to be a useful pose. The older Englishman, the little one with the red hair who most likely was the official envoy, seemed tough and dangerous. And over there was another one who hadn’t been at the marketplace to see the dancing, the Russian, no doubt, a big man, strong and haughty, flat face and flat sea-green eyes and a dense little black beard through which a glint of gold teeth occasionally showed. He too seemed dangerous, physically dangerous, a man who might pick things up and smash them for amusement, but in him all the danger was on the outside, and with the little Englishman it was the other way around. Little Father wondered how much trouble these people would manage to create for him before the funeral was over and done with. It was every nation’s ambition to create trouble in the empires of Africa, after all: there was too much cheap labor here, too much in the way of raw materials, for the pale jealous folk of the overseas lands to ignore, and they were forever dreaming dreams of conquest.

But no one had ever managed it. Africa had kept itself independent of the great overseas powers. The Pasha of Egypt still held his place by the Nile, in the far south the Mambo of Zimbabwe maintained his domain amidst enough gold to make even an Aztec feel envy, and the Bey of Marrakesh was unchallenged in the north. And the strong western empires flourished as ever, Ghana, Mali, Kongo, Songhay—no, no, Africa had never let itself be eaten by Turks or Russians or even the Moors, though they had all given it a good try. Nor would it ever. Still, as he wandered among these outlanders Little Father felt contempt for him and his people drifting through the air about him like smoke. He wished that he could have made a properly royal entrance, coming upon the foreigners in style, with drums and trumpets and bugles. Preceded as he entered by musicians carrying gold and silver guitars, and followed by a hundred armed slaves. But those were royal prerogatives, and he was not yet Emir. Besides, this was a solemn time in Songhay, and such pomp was unbefitting. And the foreigners would very likely look upon it as the vulgarity of a barbarian, anyway, or the quaint grandiosity of a primitive.

Little Father downed his brandy in three quick gulps and held out the cup for more. It was beginning to restore his spirit. He felt a sense of deep well-being, of ease and assurance.

But just then came a stir and a hubbub at the north door of the reception hall. In amazement and fury he saw Serene Glory entering, Big Father’s main wife, surrounded by her full retinue. Her hair was done up in the elaborate great curving horns of the scorpion style, and she wore astonishing festoons of jewelry, necklaces of gold and amber, bracelets of silver and ebony and beads, rings of stone, earrings of shining ivory.

To Ali Pasha the prince said, hissing, “What’s she doing here?”

“You invited her yourself, Little Father.”

Little Father stared into his cup.

“I did?”

“There is no question of that, sir.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” Little Father shook his head. “I must have been drunk. What was I thinking of?” Big Father’s main wife was young and beautiful, younger, indeed, than Little Father himself; and she was an immense annoyance. Big Father had had six wives in his time, or possibly seven—Little Father was not sure, and he had never dared to ask—of whom all of the earliest ones were now dead, including Little Father’s own mother. Of the three that remained, one was an elderly woman who lived in retirement in Gao, and one was a mere child, the old man’s final toy; and then there was this one, this witch, this vampire, who placed no bounds on her ambitions. Only six months before, when Big Father had still been more or less healthy, Serene Glory had dared to offer herself to Little Father as they returned together from the Great Mosque. Of course he desired her. Who would not? But the idea was monstrous. Little Father would no more lay a hand on one of Big Father’s wives than he would lie down with a crocodile. Clearly this woman, suspecting that the father was approaching his end, had had some dream of beguiling the son. That would not happen. Once Big Father was safely interred in the royal cemetery Serene Glory would go into chaste retirement, however beautiful she might be.

“Get her out of here, fast!” Little Father whispered.

“But she has every right—she is the wife of the Emir—”

“Then keep her away from me, at least. If she comes within five feet of me tonight, you’ll be tending camels tomorrow, do you hear? Within ten feet. See to it.”

“She will come nowhere near you, Little Father.”

There was an odd look on Ali Pasha’s face.

“Why are you smiling?” Little Father asked.

“Smiling? I am not smiling, Little Father.”

“No. No, of course not.”

Little Father made a gesture of dismissal and walked toward the platform of audience. A reception line began to form. The Russian was the first to present his greetings to the prince, and then the Aztec, and then the Englishman. There were ceremonial exchanges of gifts. At last it was the turn of the Turk. He had brought a splendid set of ornate daggers, inlaid with jewels. Little Father received them politely and, as he had with the other ambassadors, he bestowed an elaborately carved segment of ivory tusk upon Ismet Akif. The girl stood shyly to one side.

“May I present also my daughter Selima,” said Ismet Akif.

She was well trained. She made a quick little ceremonial bow, and as she straightened her eyes met Little Father’s, only for a moment, and it was enough. Warmth traveled just beneath his skin nearly the entire length of his body, a signal he knew well. He smiled at her. The smile was a communicative one, and was understood and reciprocated. Even in that busy room those smiles had the force of thunderclaps. Everyone had been watching. Quickly Little Father’s gaze traversed the reception hall, and in a fraction of an instant he took in the sudden flicker of rage on the face of Serene Glory, the sudden knowing look on Ali Pasha’s, the sudden anguished comprehension on that of the tall young Englishman. Only Ismet Akif remained impassive; and yet Little Father had little doubt that he too was in on the transaction. In the wars of love there are rarely any secrets amongst those on the field of combat.

Every day there was dancing in the marketplace. Some days the dancers kept their heads motionless and put everything else into motion; other days they let their heads oscillate like independent creatures, while scarcely moving a limb. There were days of shouting dances and days of silent dances. Sometimes brilliant robes were worn and sometimes the dancers were all but naked.

In the beginning the foreign ambassadors went regularly to watch the show. But as time went on, the Emir continued not to die, and the intensity of the heat grew and grew, going beyond the uncomfortable into the implausible and then beyond that to the unimaginable, they tended to stay within the relative coolness of their own compounds despite the temptations of the daily show in the plaza. New ambassadors arrived daily, from the Maori Confederation, from China, from Peru finally, from lesser lands like Korea and Ind and the Teutonic States, and for a time the newcomers went to see the dancing with the same eagerness as their predecessors. Then they too stopped attending.

The Emir’s longevity was becoming an embarrassment. Weeks were going by and the daily bulletins were a monotonous succession of medical ups and downs, with no clear pattern. The special ambassadors, unexpectedly snared in an ungratifying city at a disagreeable time of year, could not leave, but were beginning to find it an agony to stay on. It was evident to everyone now that the news of Big Father’s imminent demise had gone forth to the world in a vastly overanticipatory way.

“If only the old bastard would simply get up and step out on his balcony and tell us he’s healthy again, and let us all go home,” Sir Anthony said. “Or succumb at last, one or the other. But this suspension, this indefiniteness—”

“Perhaps the prince will grow weary of the waiting and have him smothered in a pillow,” Prince Itzcoatl suggested.

The Englishman shook his head. “He’d have done that ten years ago, if he had it in him at all. The time’s long past for him to murder his father.”

They were on the covered terrace of the Mexican embassy. In the dreadful heat-stricken silence of the day the foreign dignitaries, as they awaited the intolerably deferred news of the Emir’s death, moved in formal rotation from one embassy to another, making ceremonial calls in accordance with strict rules of seniority and precedence.

“His Excellency the Grand Duke Alexander Petrovitch,” the Aztec major domo announced.

The foreign embassies were all in the same quarter of New Timbuctoo, along the grand boulevard known as The Street of All Nations. In the old days the foreigners had lived in the center of the Old Town, in fine houses in the best native style, palaces of stone and brick covered with mauve or orange clay. But Big Father had persuaded them one by one to move to the New City. It was undignified and uncomfortable, he insisted, for the representatives of the great overseas powers to live in mud houses with earthen floors.

Having all the foreigners’ dwellings lined up in a row along a single street made it much simpler to keep watch over them, and, in case international difficulties should arise, it would be ever so much more easy to round them all up at once under the guise of “protecting” them. But Big Father had not taken into account that it was also very much easier for the foreigners to mingle with each other, which was not necessarily a good idea. It facilitated conspiracy as well as surveillance.

“We are discussing our impatience,” Prince Itzcoatl told the Russian, who was the cousin of the Czar. “Sir Anthony is weary of Timbuctoo.”

“Nor am I the only one,” said the Englishman. “Did you hear that Maori ranting and raving yesterday at the Peruvian party? But what can we do? What can we do?”

“We could to Egypt go while we wait, perhaps,” said the Grand Duke. “The Pyramids, the Sphinx, the temples of Karkak!”

“Karnak,” Sir Anthony said. “But what if the old bugger dies while we’re gone? We’d never get back in time for the funeral. What a black eye for us!”

“And how troublesome for our plans,” said the Aztec.

“Mansa Suleiyman would never forgive us,” said Sir Anthony.

“Mansa Suleiyman! Mansa Suleiyman!” Alexander Petrovich spat. “Let the black brigand do his own dirty work, then. Brothers, let us go to Egypt. If the Emir dies while we are away, will not the prince be removed whether or not we happen to be in attendance at the funeral?”

“Should we be speaking of this here?” Prince Itzcoatl asked, plucking in displeasure at his earplugs.

“Why not? There is no danger. These people are like children. They would never suspect—”

“Even so—”

But the Russian would not be deterred. Bull-like, he said, “It will all go well whether we are here or not. Believe me. It is all arranged, I remind you. So let us go to Egypt, then, before we bake to death. Before we choke on the sand that blows through these miserable streets.”

“Egypt’s not a great deal cooler than Songhay right now,” Prince Itzcoatl pointed out. “And sand is not unknown there either.”

The Grand Duke’s massive shoulders moved in a ponderous shrugging gesture.

“To the south, then, to the Great Waterfalls. It is winter in that part of Africa, such winter as they have. Or to the Islands of the Canaries. Anywhere, anywhere at all, to escape from this Timbuctoo. I fry here. I sizzle here. I remind you that I am Russian, my friends. This is no climate for Russians.”

Sir Anthony stared suspiciously into the sea-green eyes. “Are you the weak link in our little affair, my dear Duke Alexander? Have we made a mistake by asking you to join us?”

“Does it seem so to you? Am I untrustworthy, do you think?”

“The Emir could die at any moment. Probably will. Despite what’s been happening, or not happening, it’s clear that he can’t last very much longer. The removal of the prince on the day of the funeral, as you have just observed, has been arranged. But how can we dare risk being elsewhere on that day? How can we even think of such a thing?” Sir Anthony’s lean face grew florid; his tight mat of graying red hair began to rise and crackle with inner electricity; his chilly blue eyes became utterly arctic. “It is essential that in the moment of chaos that follows, the great-power triumvirate we represent—the troika, as you say—be on hand here to invite King Suleiyman of Mali to take charge of the country. I repeat, your excellency: essential. The time factor is critical. If we are off on holiday in Egypt, or anywhere else—if we are so much as a day too late getting back here—”

Prince Itzcoatl said, “I think the Grand Duke understands that point, Sir Anthony.”

“Ah, but does he? Does he?”

“I think so.” The Aztec drew in his breath sharply and let his gleaming obsidian eyes meet those of the Russian. “Certainly he sees that we’re all in it too deep to back out, and that therefore he has to abide by the plan as drawn, however inconvenient he may find it personally.”

The Grand Duke, sounding a little nettled, said, “We are traveling too swiftly here, I think. I tell you, I hate this filthy place, I hate its impossible heat, I hate its blowing sand, I hate its undying Emir, I hate its slippery lecherous prince. I hate the smell of the air, even. It is the smell of camel shit, the smell of old mud. But I am your partner in this undertaking to the end. I will not fail you, believe me.” His great shoulders stirred like boulders rumbling down a slope. “The consolidation of Mali and Songhay would be displeasing to the Sultan, and therefore it is pleasing to the Czar. I will assist you in making it happen, knowing that such a consolidation has value for your own nations as well, which also is pleasing to my royal cousin. By the Russian Empire from the plan there will be no withdrawal. Of such a possibility let there be no more talk.”

“Of holidays in Egypt let there be no more talk either,” said Prince Itzcoatl. “Agreed? None of us likes being here, Duke Alexander. But here we have to stay, like it or not, until everything is brought to completion.”

“Agreed. Agreed.” The Russian snapped his fingers. “I did not come here to bicker. I have hospitality for you, waiting outside. Will you share vodka with me?” An attache of the Russian Embassy entered, bearing a crystal beaker in a bowl of ice. “This arrived today, by the riverboat, and I have brought it to offer to my beloved friends of England and Mexico. Unfortunately of caviar there is none, though there should be. This heat! This heat! Caviar, in this heat—impossible!” The Grand Duke laughed. “To our great countries! To international amity! To a swift and peaceful end to the Emir’s terrible sufferings! To your healths, gentlemen! To your healths!”

“To Mansa Suleiyman, King of Mali and Songhay,” Prince Itzcoatl said.

“Mansa Suleiyman, yes.”

“Mansa Suleiyman!”

“What splendid stuff,” said Sir Anthony. He held forth his glass, and the Russian attache filled it yet again. “There are other and perhaps more deserving monarchs to toast. To His Majesty King Richard the Fifth!”

“King Richard, yes!”

“And His Imperial Majesty Vladimir the Ninth!”

“Czar Vladimir! Czar Vladimir!”

“Let us not overlook His Highness Moctezuma the Twelfth!”

“King Moctezuma! King Moctezuma!”

“Shall we drink to cooler weather and happier days, gentlemen?”

“Cooler weather! Happier days!—And the Emir of Songhay, may he soon rest in peace at last!”

“And to his eldest son, the prince of the realm. May he also soon be at rest,” said Prince Itzcoatl.

Selima said, “I hear you have vampires here, and djinn. I want to know all about them.”

Little Father was aghast. She would say anything, anything at all.

“Who’s been feeding you nonsense like that? There aren’t any vampires. There aren’t any djinn either. Those things are purely mythical.”

“There’s a tree south of the city where vampires hold meetings at midnight to choose their victims. Isn’t that so? The tree is half white and half red. When you first become a vampire you have to bring one of your male cousins to the meeting for the others to feast on.”

“Some of the common people may believe such stuff. But do you think I do? Do you think we’re all a bunch of ignorant savages here, girl?”

“There’s a charm that can be worn to keep vampires from creeping into your bedroom at night and sucking your blood. I want you to get me one.”

“I tell you, there aren’t any vamp—”

“Or there’s a special prayer you can say. And while you say it you spit in four directions, and that traps the vampire in your house so he can be arrested. Tell me what it is. And the charm for making the vampire give back the blood he’s drunk. I want to know that too.”

They were on the private upstairs porch of Little Father’s palace. The night was bright with moonlight, and the air was as hot as wet velvet. Selima was wearing a long silken robe, very sheer. He could see the shadow of her breasts through it when she turned at an angle to the moon.

“Are you always like this?” he asked, beginning to feel a little irritable. “Or are you just trying to torment me?”

“What’s the point of traveling if you don’t bother to learn anything about local customs?”

“You do think we’re savages.”

“Maybe I do. Africa is the dark continent. Black skins, black souls.”

“My skin isn’t black. It’s practically as light as yours. But even if it were—”

“You’re black inside. Your blood is African blood, and Africa is the strangest place in the world. The fierce animals you have, gorillas and hippos running around everywhere, giraffes, tigers—the masks, the nightmare carvings—the witchcraft, the drums, the chanting of the high priests—”

“Please,” Little Father said. “You’re starting to drive me crazy. I’m not responsible for what goes on in the jungles of the tropics. This is Songhay. Do we seem uncivilized to you? We were a great empire when you Ottomans were still herding goats on the steppes. The only giraffe you’ll see in this city is the stuffed one in my father’s throne room. There aren’t any gorillas in Songhay, and tigers come from Asia, and if you see a hippo running, here or anywhere, please tell the newspaper right away.” Then he began to laugh. “Look, Selima, this is a modern country. We have motorcars here. We have a stock exchange. There’s a famous university in Timbuctoo, six hundred years old. I don’t bow down to tribal idols. We are an Islamic people, you know.”

It was lunacy to have let her force him onto the defensive like this. But she wouldn’t stop her attack.

“Djinn are Islamic. The Koran talks about them. The Arabs believe in djinn.”

Little Father struggled for patience. “Perhaps they did five hundred years ago, but what’s that to us? In any case we aren’t Arabs.”

“But there are djinn here, plenty of them. My head porter told me. A djinni will appear as a small black spot on the ground and will grow until he’s as big as a house. He might change into a sheep or a dog or a cat, and then he’ll disappear. The porter said that one time he was at the edge of town in Kabara, and he was surrounded by giants in white turbans that made a weird sucking noise at him.”

“What is this man’s name? He has no right filling your head with this trash. I’ll have him fed to the lions.”

“Really?” Her eyes were sparkling. “Would you? What lions? Where?”

“My father keeps them as pets, in a pit. No one is looking after them these days. They must be getting very hungry.”

“Oh, you are a savage! You are!”

Little Father grinned lopsidedly. He was regaining some of the advantage, he felt. “Lions need to be fed now and then. There’s nothing savage about that. Not feeding them, that would be savage.”

“But to feed a servant to them—?”

“If he speaks idiotic nonsense to a visitor, yes. Especially when the visitor is an impressionable young girl.”

Her eyes flashed quick lightning, sudden pique. “You think I’m impressionable? You think I’m silly?”

“I think you are young.”

“And I think you’re a savage underneath it all. Even savages can start a stock exchange. But they’re still savages.”

“Very well,” Little Father said, putting an ominous throb into his tone. “I admit it. I am the child of darkness. I am the pagan prince.” He pointed to the moon, full and swollen, hanging just above them like a plummeting polished shield. “You think that is a dead planet up there? It is alive, it is a land of djinn. And it must be nourished. So when it is full like this, the king of this land must appear beneath its face and make offerings of energy to it.”

“Energy?”

“Sexual energy,” he said portentously. “Atop the great phallic altar, beneath which we keep the dried umbilicus of each of our dead kings. First there is a procession, the phallic figures carried through the streets. And then—”

“The sacrifice of a virgin?” Selima asked.

“What’s wrong with you? We are good Moslems here. We don’t countenance murder.”

“But you countenance phallic rites at the full moon?”

He couldn’t tell whether she was taking him seriously or not.

“We maintain certain pre-Islamic customs,” he said. “It is folly to cut oneself off from one’s origins.”

“Absolutely. Tell me what you do on the night the moon is full.”

“First, the king coats his entire body in rancid butter—”

“I don’t think I like that!”

“Then the chosen bride of the moon is led forth—”

“The fair-skinned bride.”

“Fair-skinned?” he said. She saw it was a game, he realized. She was getting into it. “Why fair-skinned?”

“Because she’d be more like the moon than a black woman would. Her energy would rise into the sky more easily. So each month a white woman is stolen and brought to the king to take part in the rite.”

Little Father gave her a curious stare. “What a ferocious child you are!”

“I’m not a child. You do prefer white women, don’t you? One thing you regret is that I’m not white enough for you.”

“You seem very white to me,” said Little Father. She was at the edge of the porch now, looking outward over the sleeping city. Idly he watched her shoulderblades moving beneath her sheer gown. Then suddenly the garment began to slide downward, and he realized she had unfastened it at the throat and cast it off. She had worn nothing underneath it. Her waist was very narrow, her hips broad, her buttocks smooth and full, with a pair of deep dimples at the place where they curved outward from her back. His lips were beginning to feel very dry, and he licked them thoughtfully.

She said, “What you really want is an Englishwoman, with skin like milk, and pink nipples, and golden hair down below.”

Damn Ali Pasha! Was he out of his mind, telling such stuff to her? He’d go to the lions first thing tomorrow!

Amazed, he cried, “What are you talking about? What sort of madness is this?”

“That is what you want, isn’t it? A nice juicy golden-haired one. All of you Africans secretly want one. Some of you not so secretly. I know all about it.”

No, it was inconceivable. Ali Pasha was tricky, but he wasn’t insane. This was mere coincidence.

“Have you ever had an Englishwoman, prince? A true pink-and-gold one?”

Little father let out a sigh of relief. It was only another of her games, then. The girl was all mischief, and it came bubbling out randomly, spontaneously. Truly, she would say anything to anyone. Anything.

“Once,” he said, a little vindictively. “She was writing a book on the African empires and she came here to do some research at our university. Our simple barbaric university. One night she interviewed me, on this very porch, a night almost as warm as this one. Her name was—ah—Elizabeth. Elizabeth, yes.” Little Father’s gaze continued to rest on Selima’s bare back. She seemed much more frail above the waist than below. Below the waist she was solid, splendidly fleshly, a commanding woman, no girl at all. Languidly he said, “Skin like milk, indeed. And rosy nipples. I had never even imagined that nipples could be like that. And her hair—”

Selina turned to face him. “My nipples are dark.”

“Yes, of course. You’re a Turk. But Elizabeth—”

“I don’t want to hear any more about Elizabeth. Kiss me.”

Her nipples were dark, yes, and very small, almost like a boy’s, tiny dusky targets on the roundness of her breasts. Her thighs were surprisingly full. She looked far more voluptuous naked than when she was clothed. He hadn’t expected that. The heavy thatch at the base of her belly was jet black.

He said, “We don’t care for kissing in Songhay. It’s one of our quaint tribal taboos. The mouth is for eating, not for making love.”

“Every part of the body is for making love. Kiss me.”

“You Europeans!”

“I’m not European. I’m a Turk. You do it in some peculiar way here, don’t you? Side by side. Back to back.”

“No,” he said. “Not back to back. Never like that, not even when we feel like reverting to tribal barbarism.”

Her perfume drifted toward him, falling over him like a veil. Little Father went to her and she rose up out of the night to him, and they laughed. He kissed her. It was a lie, the thing he had told her, that Songhayans did not like to kiss. Songhayans liked to do everything: at least this Songhayan did. She slipped downward to the swirl of silken pillows on the floor, and he joined her there and covered her body with his own. As he embraced her he felt the moonlight on his back like the touch of a goddess’ fingertips, cool, delicate, terrifying.

On the horizon a sharp dawn-line of pale lavender appeared, cutting between the curving grayness above and the flat grayness below. It was like a preliminary announcement by the oboes or the French horns, soon to be transformed into the full overwhelming trumpetblast of morning. Michael, who had been wandering through Old Timbuctoo all night, stared eastward uneasily as if he expected the sky to burst into flame when the sun came into view.

Sleep had been impossible. Only his face and hands were actually sunburned, but his whole body throbbed with discomfort, as though the African sun had reached him even through his clothing. He felt the glow of it behind his knees, in the small of his back, on the soles of his feet.

Nor was there any way to escape the heat, even when the terrible glaring sun had left the sky. The nights were as warm as the days. The motionless air lay on you like burning fur. When you drew a breath you could trace its path all the way down, past your nostrils, past your throat, a trickle of molten lead descending the forking paths into your lungs and spreading out to weigh upon every individual air-sac inside you. Now and then came a breeze, but it only made things worse: it gave you no more comfort than a shower of hot ashes might have afforded. So Michael had risen after a few hours of tossing and turning and gone out unnoticed to wander under the weird and cheerless brilliance of the overhanging moon, down from the posh Embassy district into the Old Town somehow, and then from street to street, from quarter to quarter, no destination in mind, no purpose, seeking only to obliterate the gloom and misery of the night.

He was lost, of course—the Old Town was complex enough to negotiate in daylight, impossible in the dark—but that didn’t matter. He was somewhere on the western side of town, that was all he knew. The moon was long gone from the sky, as if it had been devoured, though he had not noticed it setting. Before him the ancient metropolis of mud walls and low square flat-roofed buildings lay humped in the thinning darkness, a gigantic weary beast slowly beginning to stir. The thing was to keep on walking, through the night and into the dawn, distracting himself from the physical discomfort and the other, deeper agony that had wrapped itself like some voracious starfish around his soul.

By the faint light he saw that he had reached a sort of large pond. Its water looked to be a flat metallic green. Around its perimeter crouched a shadowy horde of water-carriers, crouching to scoop the green water into goatskin bags, spooning it in with gourds. Then they straightened, with the full bags—they must have weighed a hundred pounds—balanced on their heads, and went jogging off into the dawn to deliver their merchandise at the homes of the wealthy. Little ragged girls were there too, seven or eight years old, filling jugs and tins to bring to their mothers. Some of them waded right into the pool to get what they wanted. A glowering black man in the uniform of the Emirate sat to one side, jotting down notations on a sheet of yellow paper. So this was probably the Old Town’s municipal reservoir. Michael shuddered and turned away, back into the city proper. Into the labyrinth once more.

A gray, sandy light was in the sky now. It showed him narrow dusty thoroughfares, blind walls, curving alleyways leading into dark cul-de-sacs. Entire rows of houses seemed to be crumbling away, though they were obviously still inhabited. Under foot everything was sand, making a treacherous footing. In places the entrances to buildings were half choked by the drifts. Camels, donkeys, horses wandered about on their own. The city’s mixed population—veiled Tuaregs, black Sudanese, aloof and lofty Moors, heavy-bearded Syrian traders, the whole West African racial goulash—was coming forth into the day. Who were all these people? Tailors, moneylenders, scribes, camel-breeders, masons, bakers, charm-sellers, weavers, bakers—necromancers, sages, warlocks, perhaps a few vampires on their way home from their night’s toil—Michael looked around, bewildered, trapped within his skull by the barriers of language and his own disordered mental state. He felt as though he were moving about under the surface of the sea, in a medium where he did not belong and could neither breathe nor think.

“Selima?” he said suddenly, blinking in astonishment.

His voice was voiceless. His lips moved, but no sound had come forth.

Apparition? Hallucination? No, no, she was really there. Selima glowed just across the way like a second sun suddenly rising over the city.

Michael shrank back against an immense buttress of mud brick. She had stepped out of a doorway in a smooth gray wall that surrounded what appeared to be one of the palaces of the nobility. The building, partly visible above the wall, was coated in orange clay and had elaborate Moorish windows of dark wood. He trembled. The girl wore only a flimsy white gown, so thin that he could make out the dark-tipped spheres of her breasts moving beneath it, and the dark triangle at her thighs. He wanted to cry. Had she no shame? No. No. She was indifferent to the display, and to everything around her; she would have walked completely naked through this little plaza just as casually as she strode through in this one thin garment.

“Selima, where have you spent this night? Whose palace is this?”

His words were air. No one heard them. She moved serenely onward. A motorcar appeared from somewhere, one of the five or six that Michael had seen so far in this city. A black plume of smoke rose from the vent of its coal-burning engine, and its two huge rear wheels slipped and slid about on the sandy track. Selima jumped up onto the open seat behind the driver, and with great booming exhalations the vehicle made its way through an arched passageway and disappeared into the maze of the town.

An embassy car, no doubt. Waiting here for her all night?

His soul ached. He had never felt so young, so foolish, so vulnerable, so wounded.

“Effendi?” a voice asked. “You wish a camel, effendi?”

“Thank you, no.”

“Nice hotel? Bath? Woman to massage you? Boy to massage you?”

“Please. No.”

“Some charms, maybe? Good grigri. Souvenir of Timbuctoo.”

Michael groaned. He turned away and looked back at the house of infamy from which Selima had emerged.

“That building—what is it?”

“That? Is palace of Little Father. And look, look there, effendi—Little Father himself coming out for a walk.”

The prince himself, yes. Of course. Who else would she have spent the night with, here in the Old Town? Michael was engulfed by loathing and despair. Instantly a swarm of eager citizens had surrounded the prince, clustering about him to beg favors the moment he showed himself. But he seemed to move through them with the sort of divine indifference that Selima, in her all-but-nakedness, had displayed. He appeared to be enclosed in an impenetrable bubble of self-concern. He was frowning, he looked troubled, not at all like a man who had just known the favors of the most desirable woman in five hundred miles. His lean sharp-angled face, which had been so animated at the official reception, now had a curiously stunned, immobile look about it, as though he had been struck on the head from behind a short while before and the impact was gradually sinking in.

Michael flattened himself against the buttress. He could not bear the thought of being seen by the prince now, here, as if he had been haunting the palace all night, spying on Selima. He put his arm across his face in a frantic attempt to hide himself, he whose western clothes and long legs and white skin made him stand out like a meteor. But the prince wasn’t coming toward him. Nodding in an abstracted way, he turned quickly, passed through the throng of chattering petitioners as if they were ghosts, disappeared in a flurry of white fabric.

Michael looked about for his sudden friend, the man who had wanted to sell him camels, massages, souvenirs. What he wanted now was a guide to get him out of the Old Town and back to the residence of the English ambassador. But the man was gone.

“Pardon me—” Michael said to someone who looked almost like the first one. Then he realized that he had spoken in English. Useless. He tried in Turkish and in Arabic. A few people stared at him. They seemed to be laughing. He felt transparent to them. They could see his sorrow, his heartache, his anguish, as easily as his sunburn.

Like the good young diplomat he was, he had learned a little Songhay too, the indigenous language. “Town talk,” they called it.

But the few words he had seemed all to have fled. He stood alone and helpless in the plaza, scuffing angrily at the sand, as the sun broke above the mud rooftops like the sword of an avenging angel and the full blast of morning struck him. Michael felt blisters starting to rise on his cheeks. Agitated flies began to buzz around his eyes. A camel, passing by just then, dropped half a dozen hot green turds right at his feet. He snatched one out of the sand and hurled it with all his strength at the bland blank mud-colored wall of Little Father’s palace.

Big Father was sitting up on his divan. His silken blankets were knotted around his waist in chaotic strands, and his bare torso rose above the chaos, gleaming as though it had been oiled. His arms were like sticks and his skin was three shades paler than it once had been and cascades of loose flesh hung like wattles from his neck, but there was the brilliance of black diamonds in his glittering little eyes.

“Not dead yet, you see? You see?” His voice was a cracked wailing screech, but the old authoritative thunder was still somewhere behind it. “Back from the edge of the grave, boy! Allah walks with me yet!”

Little Father was numb with chagrin. All the joy of his night with Selima had vanished in a moment when word had arrived of his father’s miraculous recovery. He had just been getting accustomed to the idea that he soon would be king, too. His first misgivings about the work involved in it had begun to ebb; he rather liked the idea of ruling, now. The crown was descending on him like a splendid gift. And here was Big Father sitting up, grinning, waving his arms around in manic glee. Taking back his gift. Deciding to live after all.

What about the funeral plans? What about the special ambassadors who had traveled so far, in such discomfort, to pay homage to the late venerable Emir of Songhay and strike their various deals with his successor?

Big Father had had his head freshly shaved and his beard had been trimmed. He looked like a gnome, ablaze with demonic energies. Off in the corner of the porch, next to the potted trees, the three marabouts stood in a circle, making sacred gestures at each other with lunatic vigor, each seeking to demonstrate superior fervor.

Hoarsely Little Father said, “Your majesty, the news astonishes and delights me. When the messenger came, telling of your miraculous recovery, I leaped from my bed and gave thanks to the All-Merciful in a voice so loud you must have heard it here.”

“Was there a woman with you, boy?”

“Father—”

“I hope you bathed before you came here. You come forth without bathing after you’ve lain with a woman and the djinn will make you die an awful death, do you realize that?”

“Father, I wouldn’t think of—”

“Frothing at the mouth, falling down in the street, that’s what’ll happen to you. Who was she? Some nobleman’s wife as usual, I suppose. Well, never mind. As long as she wasn’t mine. Come closer to me, boy.”

“Father, you shouldn’t tire yourself by talking so much.”

“Closer!”

A wizened claw reached for him. Little Father approached and the claw seized him. There was frightening strength in the old man still.

Big Father said, “I’ll be up and around in two days. I want the Great Mosque made ready for the ceremony of thanksgiving. And I’ll sacrifice to all the prophets and saints.” A fit of coughing overcame him for a space, and he pounded his fist furiously against the side of the divan. When he spoke again, his voice seemed weaker, but still determined. “There was a vampire upon me, boy! Each night she came in here and drank from me.”

“She?”

“With dark hair and pale foreign skin, and eyes that eat you alive. Every night. Stood above me, and laughed, and took my blood. But she’s gone now. These three have imprisoned her and carried her off to the Eleventh Hell.” He gestured toward the marabouts. “My saints. My heroes. I want them rewarded beyond all reckoning.”

“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.”

“And she reciprocates your love, I suppose? That’s why you were out walking like a moon-calf in this miserable parched mudhole of a city all night long?”

“She spent the night with the crown prince,” Michael blurted in misery.

“Ah. Ah, now it comes out!” Sir Anthony was silent for a while. Then he glanced up sharply, his eyes bright with skepticism. “But how do you know that?”

“I saw her leaving his palace at dawn, sir.”

“Spying on her, were you?”

“I just happened to be there. I didn’t even know it was his palace, until I asked. He came out himself a few minutes later, and went quickly off somewhere. He looked very troubled.”

“He should have looked troubled. He’d just found out that he might not get to be king as quickly as he’d like to be.”

“I don’t understand, please, sir.”

“There’s word going around town this morning that the Emir has recovered. And had sent for his son to let him know that he wasn’t quite as moribund as was generally believed.”

Michael recoiled in surprise.

“Recovered? Is it true?”

Sir Anthony offered him a benign, patronizing smile.

“So they say. But the Emir’s doctors assure us that it’s nothing more than a brief rally in an inevitable descent. The old wolf will be dead within the week. Still, it’s rather a setback for Little Father’s immediate plans. The news of the Emir’s unanticipated awakening from his coma must rather have spoiled his morning for him.”

“Good,” said Michael vindictively.

Sir Anthony laughed.

“You hate him, do you?”

“I despise him. I loathe him. I have nothing but the greatest detestation for him. He’s a cynical amoral voluptuary and nothing more. He doesn’t deserve to be a king.”

“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, lad, he’s not going to live long enough to become one.”

“What?”

“His untimely demise has been arranged. His stepmother is going to poison him at the funeral of the old Emir, if the old Emir ever has the good grace to finish dying.”

“What? What?”

Sir Anthony smiled.

“This is quite confidential, you understand. Perhaps I shouldn’t be entrusting you with it just yet. But you’d have needed to find out sooner or later. We’ve organized a little coup d’etat.”

“What? What? What?” said Michael helplessly.

“Her Highness the Lady Serene Glory would like to put her brother on the throne instead of the prince. The brother is worthless, of course. So is the prince, of course, but at least he does happen to be the rightful heir. We don’t want to see either of them have it, actually. What we’d prefer is to have the Mansa of Mali declare that the unstable conditions in Songhay following the death of the old Emir have created a danger to the security of all of West Africa that can be put to rest only by an amalgamation of the kingdoms of Mali and Songhay under a single ruler. Who would be, of course, the Mansa of Mali, precisely as your young lady so baldly suggested the other day. And that is what we intend to achieve. The Grand Duke and Prince Itzcoatl and I. As representatives of the powers whom we serve.”

Michael stared. He rubbed his cheeks as if to assure himself that this was no dream. He found himself unable to utter a sound.

Sir Anthony went on, clearly and calmly.

“And so Serene Glory gives Little Father the deadly cup, and then the Mansa’s troops cross the border, and we, on behalf of our governments, immediately recognize the new combined government. Which makes everyone happy except, I suppose, the Sultan, who has such good trade relationships with Songhay and is on such poor terms with the Mansa of Mali. But we hardly shed tears for the Sultan’s distress, do we, boy? Do we? The distress of the Turks is no concern of ours. Quite the contrary, in fact, is that not so?” Sir Anthony clapped his hand to Michael’s shoulder. It was an obvious strain for him, reaching so high. The fingers clamping into Michael’s tender sunburned skin were agony. “So let’s see no more mooning over this alluring Ottoman goddess of yours, eh, lad? It’s inappropriate for a lovely blond English boy like yourself to be lusting after a Turk, as you know very well. She’s nothing but a little slut, however she may seem to your infatuated eyes. And you needn’t take the trouble to expend any energy loathing the prince, either. His days are numbered. He won’t survive his evil old father by so much as a week. It’s all arranged.”

Michael’s jaw gaped. A glazed look of disbelief appeared in his eyes. His face was burning fiercely, not from the sunburn now, but from the intensity of his confusion.

“But sir—sir—”

“Get yourself some sleep, boy.”

“Sir!”

“Shocked, are you? Well, you shouldn’t be. There’s nothing shocking about assassinating an inconvenient king. What’s shocking to me is a grown man with pure English blood in his veins spending the night creeping pitifully around after his dissolute little Turkish inamorata as she makes her way to the bed of her African lover. And then telling me how heartsore and miserable he is. Get yourself some sleep, boy. Get yourself some sleep!”

In the midst of the uncertainty over the Emir’s impending death the semi-annual salt caravan from the north arrived in Timbuctoo. It was a great, if somewhat unexpected, spectacle, and all the foreign ambassadors, restless and by now passionately in need of diversion, turned out despite the heat to watch its entry into the city.

There was tremendous clamor. The heavy metal-studded gates of the city were thrown open and the armed escort entered first, a platoon of magnificent black warriors armed both with rifles and with scimitars. Trumpets brayed, drums pounded. A band of fierce-looking hawk-nosed fiery-eyed country chieftains in flamboyant robes came next, marching in phalanx like conquerors. And then came the salt-laden camels, an endless stream of them, a tawny river, strutting absurdly along in grotesque self-important grandeur with their heads held high and their sleepy eyes indifferent to the throngs of excited spectators. Strapped to each camel’s back were two or three huge flat slabs of salt, looking much like broad blocks of marble.

“There are said to be seven hundred of the beasts,” murmured the Chinese ambassador, Li Hsiao-ssu.

“One thousand eight hundred,” said the Grand Duke Alexander sternly. He glowered at Li Hsiao-ssu, a small, fastidious-looking man with drooping mustachios and gleaming porcelain skin, who seemed a mere doll beside the bulky Russian. There was little love lost between the Grand Duke and the Chinese envoy. Evidently the Grand Duke thought it was presumptuous that China, as a client state of the Russian Empire, as a mere vassal, in truth, had sent an ambassador at all. “One thousand eight hundred. That is the number I was told, and it is reliable. I assure you that it is reliable.”

The Chinese shrugged. “Seven hundred, three thousand, what difference is there? Either way, that’s too many camels to have in one place at one time.”

“Yes, what ugly things they are!” said the Peruvian, Manco Roca. “Such stupid faces, such an ungainly stride! Perhaps we should do these Africans a favor and let them have a few herds of llamas.”

Coolly Prince Itzcoatl said, “Your llamas, brother, are no more fit for the deserts of this continent than these camels would be in the passes of the Andes. Let them keep their beasts, and be thankful that you have handsomer ones for your own use.”

“Such stupid faces,” the Peruvian said once more.

Timbuctoo was the center of distribution for salt throughout the whole of West Africa. The salt mines were hundreds of miles away, in the center of the Sahara. Twice a year the desert traders made the twelve-day journey to the capital, where they exchanged their salt for the dried fish, grain, rice, and other produce that came up the Niger from the agricultural districts to the south and east. The arrival of the caravan was the occasion for feasting and revelry, a time of wild big-city gaiety for the visitors from such remote and placid rural outposts.

But the Emir of Songhai was dying. This was no time for a festival. The appearance of the caravan at such a moment was evidently a great embarrassment to the city officials, a mark of bad management as well as bad taste.

“They could have sent messengers upcountry to turn them back,” Michael said. “Why didn’t they, I wonder?”

“Blacks,” said Manco Roca morosely. “What can you expect from blacks.”

“Yes, of course,” Sir Anthony said, giving the Peruvian a disdainful look. “We understand that they aren’t Incas. Yet despite that shortcoming they’ve somehow managed to keep control of most of this enormous continent for thousands of years.”

“But their colossal administrative incompetence, my dear Sir Anthony—as we see here, letting a circus like this one come into town while their king lies dying—”

“Perhaps it’s deliberate,” Ismet Akif suggested. “A much needed distraction. The city is tense. The Emir’s been too long about his dying; it’s driving everyone crazy. So they decided to let the caravan come marching in.”

“I think not,” said Li Hsiao-ssu. “Do you see those municipal officials there? I detect signs of deep humiliation on their faces.”

“And who would be able to detect such things more acutely than you?” asked the Grand Duke.

The Chinese envoy stared at the Russian as though unsure whether he was being praised or mocked. For a moment his elegant face was dusky with blood. The other diplomats gathered close, making ready to defuse the situation. Politeness was ever a necessity in such a group.

Then the envoy from the Teutonic States said, “Is that not the prince arriving now?”

“Where?” Michael demanded in a tight-strung voice. “Where is he?”

Sir Anthony’s hand shot out to seize Michael’s wrist. He squeezed it unsparingly.

In a low tone he said, “You will cause no difficulties, young sir. Remember that you are English. Your breeding must rule your passions.”

Michael, glaring toward Little Father as the prince approached the city gate, sullenly pulled his arm free of Sir Anthony’s grasp and amazed himself by uttering a strange low growling sound, like that of a cat announcing a challenge. Unfamiliar hormones flooded the channels of his body. He could feel the individual bones of his cheeks and forehead moving apart from one another, he was aware of the tensing and coiling of muscles great and small. He wondered if he was losing his mind. Then the moment passed and he let out his breath in a long dismal exhalation.

Little Father wore flowing green pantaloons, a striped robe wide enough to cover his arms, and an intricately deployed white turban with brilliant feathers of some exotic sort jutting from it.

An entourage of eight or ten men surrounded him, carrying ironshafted lances. The prince strode forward so briskly that his bodyguard was hard pressed to keep up with him.

Michael, watching Selima out of the corner of his eye, murmured to Sir Anthony, “I’m terribly sorry, sir. But if he so much as glances at her you’ll have to restrain me.”

“If you so much as flicker a nostril I’ll have you billeted in our Siberian consulate for the rest of your career,” Sir Anthony replied, barely moving his lips as he spoke.

But Little Father had no time to flirt with Selima now. He barely acknowledged the presence of the ambassadors at all. A stiff formal nod, and then he moved on, into the midst of the group of caravan leaders. They clustered about him like a convocation of eagles. Among those sun-crisped swarthy upright chieftains the prince seemed soft, frail, overly citified, a dabbler confronting serious men.

Some ritual of greeting seemed to be going on. Little Father touched his forehead, extended his open palm, closed his hand with a snap, presented his palm again with a flourish. The desert men responded with equally stylized maneuvers.

When Little Father spoke, it was in Songhay, a sharp outpouring of liquid incomprehensibilities.

“What was that? What was that?” asked the ambassadors of one another. Turkish was the international language of diplomacy, even in Africa; the native tongues of the dark continent were mysteries to outsiders.

Sir Anthony, though, said softly, “He’s angry. He says the city’s closed on account of the Emir’s illness and the caravan was supposed to have waited at Kabara for further instructions. They seem surprised. Someone must have missed a signal.”

“You speak Songhay, sir?” Michael asked.

“I was posted in Mali for seven years,” Sir Anthony muttered. “It was before you were born, boy.”

“So I was right,” cried Manco Roca. “The caravan should never have been allowed to enter the city at all. Incompetence! Incompetence!”

“Is he telling them to leave?” Ismet Akif wanted to know.

“I can’t tell. They’re all talking at once. I think they’re saying that their camels need fodder. And he’s telling them that there’s no merchandise for them to buy, that the goods from upriver were held back because of the Emir’s illness.”

“What an awful jumble,” Selima said.

It was the first thing she had said all morning. Michael, who had been trying to pay no attention to her, looked toward her now in agitation. She was dressed chastely enough, in a red blouse and flaring black skirt, but in his inflamed mind she stood revealed suddenly nude, with the marks of Little Father’s caresses flaring like stigmata on her breasts and thighs. Michael sucked in his breath and held himself stiffly erect, trembling like a drawn bowstring. A sound midway between a sigh and a groan escaped him. Sir Anthony kicked his ankle sharply.

Some sort of negotiation appeared to be going on. Little Father gesticulated rapidly, grinned, did the open-close-open gesture with his hand again, tapped his chest and his forehead and his left elbow. The apparent leader of the traders matched him, gesture for gesture. Postures began to change. The tensions were easing.

Evidently the caravan would be admitted to the city.

Little Father was smiling, after a fashion. His forehead glistened with sweat; he seemed to have come through a difficult moment well, but he looked tired.

The trumpets sounded again. The camel-drovers regained the attention of their indifferent beasts and nudged them forward.

There was new commotion from the other side of the plaza.

“What’s this, now?” Prince Itzcoatl said.

A runner clad only in a loincloth appeared, coming from the direction of the city center, clutching a scroll. He was moving fast, loping in a strange lurching way. In the stupefying heat he seemed to be in peril of imminent collapse. But he staggered up to Little Father and put the scroll in his hand.

Little Father unrolled it quickly and scanned it. He nodded somberly and turned to his vizier, who stood just to his left. They spoke briefly in low whispers. Sir Anthony, straining, was unable to make out a word.

A single chopping gesture from Little Father was enough to halt the resumption of the caravan’s advance into the city. The prince beckoned the leaders of the traders to his side and conferred with them a moment or two, this time without ceremonial gesticulations. The desert men exchanged glances with one another. Then they barked rough commands. The whole vast caravan began to reverse itself.

Little Father’s motorcar was waiting a hundred paces away. He went to it now, and it headed cityward, emitting belching bursts of black smoke and loud intermittent thunderclaps of inadequate combustion.

The prince’s entourage, left behind in the suddenness, milled about aimlessly. The vizier, making shooing gestures, ordered them in some annoyance to follow their master on foot toward town. He himself held his place, watching the departure of the caravaneers.

“Ali Pasha!” Sir Anthony called. “Can you tell us what’s happened? Is there bad news?”

The vizier turned. He seemed radiant with self-importance.

“The Emir has taken a turn for the worse. They think he’ll be with Allah within the hour.”

“But he was supposed to be recovering,” Michael protested.

Indifferently, Ali Pasha said, “That was earlier. This is now.” The vizier seemed not to be deeply moved by the news. If anything his smugness seemed to have been enhanced by it. Perhaps it was something he had been very eager to hear. “The caravan must camp outside the city walls until after the funeral. There is nothing more to be seen here today. You should all go back to your residences.”

The ambassadors began to look around for their drivers.

Michael, who had come out here with Sir Anthony in the embassy motorcar, was disconcerted to discover that the envoy had already vanished, slipping away in the uproar without waiting for him. Well, it wasn’t an impossible walk back to town. He had walked five times as far in his night of no sleep.

“Michael?”

Selima was calling to him. He looked toward her, appalled.

“Walk with me,” she said. “I have a parasol. You can’t let yourself get any more sun on your face.”

“That’s very kind of you,” he said mechanically, while lunatic jealousy and anger roiled him within. Searing contemptuous epithets came to his lips and died there, unspoken. To him she was ineluctably soiled by the presumed embraces of that night of shame. How could she have done it? The prince had wiggled his finger at her, and she had run to him without a moment’s hesitation. Once more unwanted images surged through his mind: Selima and the prince entwined on a leopardskin rug; the prince mounting Selima in some unthinkable bestial African position of love; Selima, giggling girlishly, instructing the prince afterward in the no doubt equally depraved sexual customs of the land of the Sultan. Michael understood that he was being foolish; that Selima was free to do as she pleased in this loathsome land; that he himself had never staked any claim on her attention more significant than a few callow lovesick stares, so why should she have felt any compunctions about amusing herself with the prince if the prince offered amusement? “Very kind,” he said. She handed the parasol up to him and he took it from her with a rigid nerveless hand. They began to walk side by side in the direction of town, close together under the narrow, precisely defined shadow of the parasol beneath the unsparing eye of the noonday sun.

She said, “Poor Michael. I’ve upset you terribly, haven’t I?”

“Upset me? How have you possibly upset me?”

“You know.”

“No. No, really.”

His legs were leaden. The sun was hammering the top of his brain through the parasol, through his wide-brimmed topee, through his skull itself. He could not imagine how he would find the strength to walk all the way back to town with her.

“I’ve been very mischievous,” she said.

“Have you?”

He wished he were a million miles away.

“By visiting the prince in his palace that night.”

“Please, Selima.”

“I saw you, you know. Early in the morning, when I was leaving. You ducked out of sight, but not quite fast enough.”

“Selima—”

“I couldn’t help myself. Going there, I mean. I wanted to see what his palace looked like. I wanted to get to know him a little better. He’s very nice, you know. No, nice isn’t quite the word. He’s shrewd, and part of being shrewd is knowing how to seem nice. I don’t really think he’s nice at all. He’s quite sophisticated—quite subtle.”

She was flaying him, inch by inch. Another word out of her and he’d drop the parasol and run.

“The thing is, Michael, he enjoys pretending to be some sort of a primitive, a barbarian, a jungle prince. But it’s only a pretense. And why shouldn’t it be? These are ancient kingdoms here in Africa. This isn’t any jungle land with tigers sleeping behind every palm tree. They’ve got laws and culture, they’ve got courts, they have a university. And they’ve had centuries to develop a real aristocracy. They’re just as complicated and cunning as we are. Maybe more so. I was glad to get to know the man behind the facade, a little. He was fascinating, in his way, but—” She smiled brightly. “But I have to tell you, Michael: he’s not my type at all.”

That startled him, and awakened sudden new hope. Perhaps he never actually touched her, Michael told himself. Perhaps they had simply talked all night. Played little sly verbal games of oneupmanship, teasing each other, vying with each other to be sly and cruel and playful. Showing each other how complicated and cunning they could really be. Demonstrating the virtues of hundreds of years of aristocratic inbreeding. Perhaps they were too well bred to think of doing anything so commonplace as—as—

“What is your type, then?” he asked, willy-nilly.

“I prefer men who are a little shy. Men who can sometimes be foolish, even.” There was unanticipated softness in her voice, conveying a sincerity that Michael prayed was real. “I hate the kind who are always calculating, calculating, calculating. There’s something very appealing to me about English men, I have to tell you, precisely because they don’t seem so dark and devious inside—not that I’ve met very many of them before this trip, you understand, but—oh, Michael, Michael, you’re terribly angry with me, I know, but you shouldn’t be! What happened between me and the prince was nothing. Nothing! And now that he’ll be preoccupied with the funeral, perhaps there’ll be a chance for you and me to get to know each other a little better—to slip off, for a day, let’s say, while all the others are busy with the pomp and circumstance—”

She gave him a melting look. He thought for one astounded moment that she actually might mean what she was telling him.

“They’re going to assassinate him,” he suddenly heard his own voice saying, “right at the funeral.”

“What?”

“It’s all set up.” The words came rolling from him spontaneously, unstoppably, like the flow of a river. “His stepmother, the old king’s young wife—she’s going to slip him a cup of poisoned wine, or something, during one of the funeral rituals. What she wants is to make her stupid brother king in the prince’s place, and rule the country as the power behind the throne.”

Selima made a little gasping sound and stepped away from him, out from under the shelter of the parasol. She stood staring at him as though he had been transformed in the last moment or two into a hippopotamus, or a rock, or a tree.

It took her a little while to find her voice.

“Are you serious? How do you know?”

“Sir Anthony told me.”

“Sir Anthony?”

“He’s behind it. He and the Russian and Prince Itzcoatl. Once the prince is out of the way, they’re going to invite the King of Mali to step in and take over.”

Her gaze grew very hard. Her silence was inscrutable, painfully so.

Then, totally regaining her composure with what must have been an extraordinary act of inner discipline, she said, “I think this is all very unlikely.”

She might have been responding to a statement that snow would soon begin falling in the streets of Timbuctoo.

“You think so?”

“Why should Sir Anthony support this assassination? England has nothing to gain from destabilizing West Africa. England is a minor power still struggling to establish its plausibility in the world as an independent state. Why should it risk angering a powerful African empire like Songhay by meddling in its internal affairs?”

Michael let the slight to his country pass unchallenged, possibly because it seemed less like a slight to him than a statement of the mere reality. He searched instead for some reason of state that would make what he had asserted seem sensible.

After a moment he said, “Mali and Songhay together would be far more powerful than either one alone. If England plays an instrumental role in delivering the throne of Songhay up to Mali, England will surely be given a preferential role by the Mansa of Songhay in future West African trade.”

Selima nodded. “Perhaps.”

“And the Russians—you know how they feel about the Ottoman Empire. Your people are closely allied with Songhay and don’t get along well with Mali. A coup d’etat here would virtually eliminate Turkey as a commercial force in West Africa.”

“Very likely.”

She was so cool, so terribly calm.

“As for the Aztec role in this—” Michael shook his head. “God knows. But the Mexicans are always scheming around in things. Maybe they see some way of hurting Peru. There’s a lot of sea trade, you know, between Mali and Peru—it’s an amazingly short hop across the ocean from West Africa to Peru’s eastern provinces in Brazil—and the Mexicans may believe they could divert some of that trade to themselves by winning the Mansa’s favor by helping him gain possession of—”

He faltered to a halt. Something was happening. Her expression was starting to change, her facade of detached skepticism was visibly collapsing, slowly but irreversibly, like a brick wall undermined by a great earthquake.

“Yes. Yes, I see. There are substantial reasons for such a scheme. And so they will kill the prince,” Selima said.

“Have him killed, rather.”

“It’s the same thing! The very same thing!”

Her eyes began to glisten. She drew even further back from him and turned her head away, and he realized that she was trying to conceal tears from him. But she couldn’t hide the sobs that racked her.

He suspected that she was one who cried very rarely, if at all. Seeing her weep now in this uncontrollable way plunged him into an abyss of dejection.

She was making no attempt to hide her love of the prince from him. That was the only explanation for these tears.

“Selima—please, Selima—”

He felt useless.

He realized, also, that he had destroyed himself.

He had committed this monstrous breach of security, he saw now, purely in the hope of insinuating himself into her confidence, to bind her to him in a union that proceeded from shared possession of an immense secret. He had taken her words at face value when she had told him that the prince was nothing to her.

That had been a serious error. He had thought he was making a declaration of love; but all he had done was to reveal a state secret to England’s ancient enemy.

He waited, feeling huge and clumsy and impossibly naive.

Then, abruptly, her sobbing stopped and she looked toward him, a little puffy-eyed now, but otherwise as inscrutable as before.

“I’m not going to say anything about this to anyone.”

“What?”

“Not to him, not to my father, not to anyone.”

He was mystified. As usual.

“But—Selima—”

“I told you. The prince is nothing to me. And this is only a crazy rumor. How do I know it’s true? How do you know it’s true?”

“Sir Anthony—”

“Sir Anthony! Sir Anthony! For all I know, he’s floated this whole thing simply to ensnare my father in some enormous embarrassment. I tell my father there’s going to be an assassination and my father tells the prince, as he’d feel obliged to do. And then the prince arrests and expels the ambassadors of England and Russia and Mexico? But where’s the proof? There isn’t any. It’s all a Turkish invention, they say. A scandal. My father is sent home in disgrace. His career is shattered. Songhay breaks off diplomatic relations with the Empire. No, no, don’t you see, I can’t say a thing.”

“But the prince—”

“His stepmother hates him. If he’s idiotic enough to let her hand him a cup of something without having it tested, he deserves to be poisoned. What is that to me? He’s only a savage. Hold the parasol closer, Michael, and let’s get back to town. Oh, this heat! This unending heat! Do you think it’ll ever rain here?” Her face now showed no sign of tears at all. Wearily Michael lowered the parasol. Selima utterly baffled him. She was an exhausting person. His head was aching. For a shilling he’d be glad to resign his post and take up sheep farming somewhere in the north of England. It was getting very obvious to him and probably to everyone else that he had no serious future in the diplomatic corps.

Little Father, emerging from the tunnel that led from the Emir’s palace to his own, found Ali Pasha waiting in the little colonnaded gallery known as the Promenade of Askia Mohammed. The prince was surprised to see a string charm of braided black, red, and yellow cords dangling around the vizier’s neck. Ali Pasha had never been one for wearing grigri before; but no doubt the imminent death of the Emir was unsettling everyone, even a piece of tough leather like Ali Pasha.

The vizier offered a grand salaam. “Your royal father, may Allah embrace him, sir—”

“My royal father is still breathing, thank you. It looks now as if he’ll last until morning.” Little Father glanced around, a little wildly, peering into the courtyard of his palace. “Somehow we’ve left too much for the last minute. The lady Serene Glory is arranging for the washing of the body. It’s too late to do anything about that, but we can supply the graveclothes, at least. Get the very finest white silks; the royal burial shroud should be something out of the Thousand and One Nights; and I want rubies in the turban. Actual rubies, no damned imitations. And after that I want you to set up the procession to the Great Mosque—I’ll be one of the pallbearers, of course, and we’ll ask the Mansa of Mali to be another—he’s arrived by now, hasn’t he?—and let’s have the King of Benin as the third one, and for the fourth, well, either the Asante of Ghana or the Grand Fon of Dahomey, whichever one shows up here first. The important thing is that all four of the pallbearers should be kings, because Serene Glory wants to push her brother forward to be one, and I can’t allow that. She won’t be able to argue precedence for him if the pallbearers are all kings, when all he is is a provincial cadi. Behind the bier we’ll have the overseas ambassadors marching five abreast—put the Turk and the Russian in the front row, the Maori too, and the Aztec and the Inca on the outside edges to keep them as far apart as we can, and the order of importance after that is up to you, only be sure that little countries like England and the Teutonic States don’t wind up too close to the major powers, and that the various vassal nations like China and Korea and Ind are in the back. Now, as far as the decorations on the barge that’ll be taking my father downriver to the burial place at Gao—”

“Little Father,” the Vizier said, as the prince paused for breath, “the Turkish woman is waiting upstairs.”

Little Father gave him a startled look.

“I don’t remember asking her to come here.”

“She didn’t say you had. But she asked for an urgent audience, and I thought—” Ali Pasha favored Little Father with an obscenely knowing smile. “It seemed reasonable to admit her.”

“She knows that my father is dying, and that I’m tremendously busy?”

“I told her what was taking place, majesty,” said Ali Pasha unctuously.

“Don’t call me ‘majesty’ yet!”

“A thousand pardons, Little Father. But she is aware of the nature of the crisis, no question of that. Nevertheless, she insisted on—”

“Oh, damn. Damn! But I suppose I can give her two or three minutes. Stop smiling like that, damn you! I’ll feed you to the lions if you don’t! What do you think I am, a mountain of lechery? This is a busy moment. When I say two or three minutes, two or three minutes is what I mean.”

Selima was pacing about on the porch where she and Little Father had spent their night of love. No filmy robes today, no seductively visible breasts bobbing about beneath, this time. She was dressed simply, in European clothes. She seemed all business.

“The Emir is in his last hours,” Little Father said. “The whole funeral has to be arranged very quickly.”

“I won’t take up much of your time, then.” Her tone was cool. There was a distinct edge on it. Perhaps he had been too brusque with her. That night on the porch had been a wonderful one, after all. She said, “I just have one question. Is there some sort of ritual at a royal funeral where you’re given a cup of wine to drink?”

“You know that the Koran doesn’t permit the drinking of—”

“Yes, yes, I know that. A cup of something, then.”

Little Father studied her carefully. “This is anthropological research? The sort of thing the golden-haired woman from England came here to do? Why does this matter to you, Selima?”

“Never mind that. It matters.”

He sighed. She seemed so gentle and retiring, until she opened her mouth.

“There’s a cup ceremony, yes. It isn’t wine or anything else alcoholic. It’s an aromatic potion, brewed from various spices and honeys and such, very disagreeably sweet, my father once told me. Drinking it symbolizes the passage of royal power from one generation to the next.”

“And who is supposed to hand you the cup?”

“May I ask why at this particularly hectic time you need to know these details?”

“Please,” she said.

There was an odd urgency in her voice.

“The former queen, the mother of the heir of the throne, is the one who hands the new Emir the cup.”

“But your mother is dead. Therefore your stepmother Serene Glory will hand it to you.”

“That’s correct.” Little Father glanced at his watch. “Selima, you don’t seem to understand. I need to finish working out the funeral arrangements and then get back to my father’s bedside before he dies. If you don’t mind—”

“There’s going to be poison in the cup.”

“This is no time for romantic fantasies.”

“It isn’t a fantasy. She’s going to slip you a cup of poison, and you won’t be able to tell that the poison is there because what you drink is so heavily spiced anyway. And when you keel over in the mosque her brother’s going to leap forward in the moment of general shock and tell everyone that he’s in charge.”

The day had been one long disorderly swirl. But suddenly now the world stood still, as though there had been an unscheduled eclipse of the sun. For a moment he had difficulty simply seeing her.

“What are you saying, Selima?”

“Do you want me to repeat it all, or is that just something you’re saying as a manner of speaking because you’re so astonished?”

He could see and think again. He examined her closely. She was unreadable, as she usually was. Now that the first shock of her bland statement was past, this all was starting to seem to him like fantastic nonsense; and yet, and yet, it certainly wasn’t beyond Serene Glory’s capabilities to have hatched such a scheme.

How, though, could the Turkish girl possibly know anything about it? How did she even know about the ritual of the cup?

“If we were in bed together right now,” he said, “and you were in my arms and right on the edge of the big moment, and I stopped moving and asked you right then and there what proof you had of this story, I’d probably believe whatever you told me. I think people tend to be honest at such moments. Even you would speak the truth. But we have no time for that now. The kingship will change hands in a few hours, and I’m exceedingly busy. I need you to cast away all of your fondness for manipulative amusements and give me straight answers.”

Her dark eyes flared. “I should simply have let them poison you.”

“Do you mean that?”

“What you just said was insufferable.”

“If I was too blunt, I ask you to forgive me. I’m under great strain today and if what you’ve told me is any sort of joke, I don’t need it. If this isn’t a joke, you damned well can’t withhold any of the details.”

“I’ve given you the details.”

“Not all. Who’d you hear all this from?”

She sighed and placed one wrist across the other.

“Michael. The tall Englishman.”

“That adolescent?”

“He’s a little on the innocent side, especially for a diplomat, yes. But I don’t think he’s as big a fool as he’s been letting himself appear lately. He heard it from Sir Anthony.”

“So this is an English plot?”

“English and Russian and Mexican.”

“All three.” Little Father digested that. “What’s the purpose of assassinating me?”

“To make Serene Glory’s brother Emir of Songhay.”

“And serve as their puppet, I suppose?”

Selima shook her head. “Serene Glory and her brother are only the ignorant instruments of their real plan. They’ll simply be brushed aside when the time comes. What the plotters are really intending to do, in the confusion following your death, is ask the Mansa of Mali to seize control of Songhay. They’ll put the support of their countries behind him.”

“Ah,” Little Father said. And after a moment, again, “Ah.”

“Mali-Songhay would favor the Czar instead of the Sultan. So the Russians like the idea. What injures the Sultan is good for the English. So they’re in on it. As for the Aztecs—”

Little Father shrugged and gestured to her to stop. Already he could taste the poison in his gut, burning through his flesh. Already he could see the green-clad troops of Mali parading in the streets of Timbuctoo and Gao, where kings of Mali had been hailed as supreme monarchs once before, hundreds of years ago.

“Look at me,” he said. “You swear that you’re practicing no deception, Selima?”

“I swear it by—by the things we said to each other the night we lay together.”

He considered that. Had she fallen in love with him in the midst of all her game-playing? So it might seem. Could he trust what she was saying, therefore? He believed he could. Indeed the oath she had just proposed might have more plausibility than any sort of oath she might have sworn on a Koran.

“Come here,” he said.

She approached him. Little Father swept her up against him, holding her tightly, and ran his hands down her back to her buttocks. She pressed her hips forward. He covered her mouth with his and jammed down hard, not a subtle kiss but one that would put to rest forever, if that were needed, the bit of fake anthropology he had given to her earlier, about the supposed distaste of Songhayans for the act of kissing. After a time he released her. Her eyes were a little glazed, her breasts were rising and falling swiftly.

He said, “I’m grateful for what you’ve told me. I’ll take the appropriate steps, and thank you.”

“I had to let you know. I was going just to sit back and let whatever happened happen. But then I saw I couldn’t conceal such a thing from you.”

“Of course not, Selima.”

Her look was a soft and eager one. She was ready to run off to the bedchamber with him, or so it seemed. But not now, not on this day of all days. That would be a singularly bad idea.

“On the other hand,” he said, “if it turns out that there’s no truth to any of this, that it’s all some private amusement of your own or some intricate deception being practiced on me by the Sultan for who knows what unfathomable reason, you can be quite certain that I’ll avenge myself in a remarkably vindictive way once the excitements of the funeral and the coronation are over.”

The softness vanished at once. The hatred that came into her eyes was extraordinary.

“You black bastard,” she said.

“Only partly black. There is much Moorish blood in the veins of the nobility of Songhay.” He met her seething gaze with tranquility. “In the old days we believed in absorbing those who attempt to conquer us. These days we still do, something that the Mansa of Mali ought to keep in mind. He’s got a fine harem, I understand.”

“Did you have to throw cold water on me like that? Everything I told you was the truth.”

“I hope and believe it is. I think there was love between us that night on the porch, and I wouldn’t like to think that you’d betray someone you love. The question, I suppose, is whether the Englishman was telling you the truth. Which still remains to be seen.” He took her hand and kissed it lightly, in the European manner. “As I said before, I’m very grateful, Selima. And hope to continue to be. If I may, now—”

She gave him one final glare and took her leave of him. Little Father walked quickly to the edge of the porch, spun about, walked quickly back. For an instant or two he stood in the doorway like his own statue. But his mind was in motion, and moving very swiftly.

He peered down the stairs to the courtyard below.

“Ali Pasha!”

The vizier came running.

“What the woman wanted to tell me,” Little Father said, “is that there is a plot against my life.”

The look that appeared on the vizier’s face was one of total shock and indignation.

“You believe her?”

“Unfortunately I think I do.”

Ali Pasha began to quiver with wrath. His broad glossy cheeks grew congested, his eyes bulged. Little Father thought the man was in danger of exploding.

“Who are the plotters, Little Father? I’ll have them rounded up within the hour.”

“The Russian ambassador, apparently. The Aztec one. And the little Englishman, Sir Anthony.”

“To the lions with them! They’ll be in the pit before night comes!”

Little Father managed an approximation of a smile.

“Surely you recall the concept of diplomatic immunity, Ali Pasha?”

“But—a conspiracy against your majesty’s life—!”

“Not yet my majesty, Ali Pasha.”

“Your pardon.” Ali Pasha struggled with confusion. “You must take steps to protect yourself, Little Father. Did she tell you what the plan is supposed to be?”

Little Father nodded. “When Serene Glory hands me the coronation cup at the funeral service, there will be poison in the drink.”

“Poison!”

“Yes. I fall down dead. Serene Glory turns to her miserable brother and offers him the crown on the spot. But no, the three ambassadors have other ideas. They’ll ask Mansa Suleiyman to proclaim himself king, in the name of the general safety. In that moment Songhay will come under the rule of Mali.”

“Never! To the lions with Mansa Suleiyman too, majesty!”

“No one goes to the lions, Ali Pasha. And stop calling me majesty. We’ll deal with this in a calm and civilized way, is that understood?”

“I am completely at your command, sir. As always.”

Little Father nodded. He felt his strength rising, moment by moment. His mind was wondrously clear. He asked himself if that was what it felt like to be a king. Though he had spent so much time being a prince, he had in fact given too little thought to what the actual sensations and processes of being a king might be, he realized now. His royal father had held the kingdom entirely in his own hands throughout all his long reign. But something must be changing now.

He went unhurriedly to the edge of the porch, and stared out into the distance. To his surprise, there was a dark orange cloud on the horizon, sharply defined against the sky.

“Look there, Ali Pasha. The rains are coming!”

“The first cloud, yes. There it is!” And he began to finger the woven charm that hung about his neck.

It was always startling when the annual change came, after so many months of unbroken hot dry weather. Even after a lifetime of watching the shift occur, no one in Songhay was unmoved by the approach of the first cloud, for it was a powerful omen of transition and culmination, removing a great element of uncertainty and fear from the minds of the citizens; for until the change finally arrived, there was always the chance that it might never come, that this time the summer would last forever and the parched world would burn to a crisp.

Little Father said, “I should go to my father without any further delay. Certainly this means that his hour has come.”

“Yes. Yes.”

The orange cloud was sweeping toward the city with amazing rapidity. In another few minutes all Timbuctoo would be enveloped in blackness as a whirling veil of fine sand whipped down over it. Little Father felt the air grow moist. There would be a brief spell of intolerable humidity, now, so heavy that breathing itself would be a vast effort. And then, abruptly, the temperature would drop, the chill rain would descend, rivers would run in the sandy streets, the marketplace would become a lake.

He raced indoors, with Ali Pasha following along helterskelter behind him.

“The plotters, sir—” the vizier gasped.

Little Father smiled. “I’ll invite Serene Glory to share the cup with me. We’ll see what she does then. Just be ready to act when I give the orders.”

There was darkness at every window. The sandstorm was at hand. Trillions of tiny particles beat insistently at every surface, setting up a steady drumming that grew and grew and grew in intensity. The air had turned sticky, almost viscous: it was hard work to force oneself forward through it.

Gasping for breath, Little Father moved as quickly as he was able down the subterranean passageway that linked his palace with the much greater one that shortly would be his.

The ministers and functionaries of the royal court were wailing and weeping. The Grand Vizier of the realm, waiting formally at the head of the Stairs of Allah, glared at Little Father as though he were the Angel of Death himself.

“There is not much more time, Little Father.”

“So I understand.”

He rushed out onto his father’s porch. There had been no opportunity to bring the Emir indoors. The old man lay amidst his dazzling blankets with his eyes open and one hand upraised. He was in the correct position in which a Moslem should pass from this world to the next, his head to the south, his face turned toward the east. The sky was black with sand, and it came cascading down with unremitting force. The three saintly marabouts who had attended Big Father throughout his final illness stood above him, shielding the Emir from the shower of tiny abrasive particles with an improvised canopy, an outstretched bolt of satin.

“Father! Father!”

The Emir tried to sit up. He looked a thousand years old.

His eyes glittered like lightning-bolts, and he said something, three or four congested syllables. Little Father was unable to understand a thing. The old man was already speaking the language of the dead.

There was a clap of thunder. The Emir fell back against his pillows.

The sky opened and the first rain of the year came down in implacable torrents, in such abundance as had not been seen in a thousand years.

In the three days since the old Emir’s death Little Father had lived through this scene three thousand times in his imagination. But now it was actually occurring. They were in the Great Mosque; the mourners, great and simple, were clustered elbow to elbow; the corpse of Big Father, embalmed so that it could endure the slow journey downriver to the royal burial grounds, lay in splendor atop its magnificent bier. Any ordinary citizen of Songhay would have gone from his deathbed to his grave in two hours, or less; but kings were exempt from the ordinary customs.

They were done at last with the chanting of the prayer for the dead. Now they were doing the prayer for the welfare of the kingdom. Little Father held his body rigid, barely troubling to breathe. He saw before him the grand nobles of the realm, the kings of the adjacent countries, the envoys of the overseas lands, all staring, all maintaining a mien of the deepest solemnity, even those who could not comprehend a word of what was being said.

And here was Serene Glory, now, coming forth bearing the cup that would make him Emir of Songhay, Great Imam, master of the nation, successor to all the great lords who had led the empire in grandeur for a thousand years.

She looked magnificent, truly queenly, more beautiful in her simple funeral robe and unadorned hair than she could ever have looked in all her finery. The cup, a stark bowl of lustrous chalcedony, so translucent that the dark liquor that would make him king was plainly visible through its thin walls, was resting lightly on her upturned palms.

He searched her for a sign of tremor and saw none. She was utterly calm. He felt a disturbing moment of doubt.

She handed him the cup, and spoke the words of succession, clearly, unhesitatingly, omitting not the smallest syllable. She was in full control of herself.

When he lifted the cup to his lips, though, he heard the sharp unmistakable sound of her suddenly indrawn breath, and all hesitation went from him.

“Mother,” he said.

The unexpected word reverberated through the whitewashed alcoves of the Great Mosque. They must all be looking at him in bewilderment.

“Mother, in this solemn moment of the passing of the kingship, I beg you share my ascension with me. Drink with me, mother. Drink. Drink.”

He held the untouched cup out toward the woman who had just handed it to him.

Her eyes were bright with horror.

“Drink with me, mother,” he said again.

“No—no—”

She backed a step or two away from him, making sounds like gravel in her throat.

“Mother—lady, dear lady—”

He held the cup out, insistently. He moved closer to her. She seemed frozen. The truth was emblazoned on her face. Rage rose like a fountain in him, and for an instant he thought he was going to hurl the drink in her face; but then he regained his poise. Her hand was pressed against her lips in terror. She moved back, back, back.

And then she was running toward the door of the mosque; and abruptly the Grand Duke Alexander Petrovich, his face erupting with red blotches of panic, was running also, and also Prince Itzcoatl of Mexico.

“No! Fools!” a voice cried out, and the echoes hammered at the ancient walls.

Little Father looked toward the foreign ambassadors. Sir Anthony stood out as though in a spotlight, his cheeks blazing, his eyes popping, his fingers exploring his lips as though he could not believe they had actually uttered that outcry.

There was complete confusion in the mosque. Everyone was rushing about, everyone was bellowing. But Little Father was quite calm. Carefully he set the cup down, untouched, at his feet. Ali Pasha came to his side at once.

“Round them up quickly,” he told the vizier. “The three ambassadors are persona non grata. They’re to leave Songhay by the next riverboat. Escort Mansa Suleiyman back to the Embassy of Mali and put armed guards around the building—for purely protective purposes, of course. And also the embassies of Ghana, Dahomey, Benin, and the rest, for good measure—and as window-dressing.”

“It will be done, majesty.”

“Very good.” He indicated the chalcedony cup. “As for this stuff, give it to a dog to drink, and let’s see what happens.”

Ali Pasha nodded and touched his forehead.

“And the lady Serene Glory, and her brother?”

“Take them into custody. If the dog dies, throw them both to the lions.”

“Your majesty—!”

“To the lions, Ali Pasha.”

“But you said—”

“To the lions, Ali Pasha.”

“I hear and obey, majesty.”

“You’d better.” Little Father grinned. He was Little Father no longer, he realized. “I like the way you say it: Majesty. You put just the right amount of awe into it.”

“Yes, majesty. Is there anything else, majesty?”

“I want an escort too, to take me to my palace. Say, fifty men. No, make it a hundred. Just in case there are any surprises waiting for us outside.”

“To your old palace, majesty?”

The question caught him unprepared. “No,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “Of course not. To my new palace. To the palace of the Emir.”

Selima came hesitantly forward into the throne room, which was one of the largest, most forbidding rooms she had ever entered. Not even the Sultan’s treasurehouse at the Topkapi Palace had any chamber to match this one for sheer dismal mustiness, for clutter, or for the eerie hodgepodge of its contents. She found the new Emir standing beneath a stuffed giraffe, examining an ivory globe twice the size of a man’s head that was mounted on an intricately carved spiral pedestal.

“You sent for me, your highness?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. It’s all calm outside there, now, I take it?”

“Very calm. Very calm.”

“Good. And the weather’s still cool?”

“Quite cool, your majesty.”

“But not raining again yet?”

“No, not raining.”

“Good.” Idly he fondled the globe. “The whole world is here, do you know that? Right under my hand. Here’s Africa, here’s Europe, here’s Russia. This is the Empire, here.” He brushed his hand across the globe from Istanbul to Madrid. “There’s still plenty of it, eh?” He spun the ivory sphere easily on its pedestal. “And this, the New World. Such emptiness there. The Incas down here in the southern continent, the Aztecs here in the middle, and a lot of nothing up here in the north. I once asked my father, do you know, if I could pay a visit to those empty lands. So cool there, I hear. So green, and almost empty. Just the red-skinned people, and not very many of them. Are they really red, do you think? I’ve never seen one.” He looked closely at her. “Have you ever thought of leaving Turkey, I wonder, and taking up a new life for yourself in those wild lands across the ocean?”

“Never, your majesty.”

She was trembling a little.

“You should think of it. We all should. Our countries are all too old. The land is tired. The air is tired. The rivers move slowly. We should go somewhere where things are fresh.” She made no reply. After a moment’s silence he said, “Do you love that tall gawky pink-faced Englishman, Selima?”

“Love?”

“Love, yes. Do you have any kind of fondness for him? Do you care for him at all? If love is too strong a word for you, would you say at least that you enjoy his company, that you see a certain charm in him, that—well, surely you understand what I’m saying.”

She seemed flustered. “I’m not sure that I do.”

“It appears to me that you feel attracted to him. God knows he feels attracted to you. He can’t go back to England, you realize. He’s compromised himself fifty different ways. Even after we patch up this conspiracy thing, and we certainly will, one way or another, the fact still remains that he’s guilty of treason. He has to go somewhere. He can’t stay here—the heat will kill him fast, if his own foolishness doesn’t. Are you starting to get my drift, Selima?”

Her eyes rose to meet his. Some of her old self-assurance was returning to them now.

“I think I am. And I think that I like it.”

“Very good,” he said. “I’ll give him to you, then. For a toy, if you like.” He clapped his hands. A functionary poked his head into the room.

“Send in the Englishman.”

Michael entered. He walked with the precarious stride of someone who has been decapitated but thinks there might be some chance of keeping his head on his shoulders if only he moves carefully enough. The only traces of sunburn that remained now were great peeling patches on his cheeks and forehead.

He looked toward the new Emir and murmured a barely audible courtly greeting. He seemed to have trouble looking in Selima’s direction.

“Sir?” Michael asked finally.

The Emir smiled warmly. “Has Sir Anthony left yet?”

“This morning, sir. I didn’t speak with him.”

“No. No, I imagine you wouldn’t care to. It’s a mess, isn’t it, Michael? You can’t really go home.”

“I understand that, sir.”

“But obviously you can’t stay here. This is no climate for the likes of you.”

“I suppose not, sir.”

The Emir nodded. He reached about behind him and lifted a book from a stand. “During my years as prince I had plenty of leisure to read. This is one of my favorites. Do you happen to know which book it is?”

“No, sir.”

“The collected plays of one of your great English writers, as a matter of fact. The greatest, so I’m told. Shakespeare’s his name. You know his work, do you?”

Michael blinked. “Of course, sir. Everyone knows—”

“Good. And you know his play Alexius and Khurrem, naturally?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Emir turned to Selima. “And do you?”

“Well—”

“It’s quite relevant to the case, I assure you. It takes place in Istanbul, not long after the Ottoman Conquest. Khurrem is a beautiful young woman from one of the high Turkish families. Alexius is an exiled Byzantine prince who has slipped back into the capital to try to rescue some of his family’s treasures from the grasp of the detested conqueror. He disguises himself as a Turk and meets Khurrem at a banquet, and of course they fall in love. It’s an impossible romance—a Turk and a Greek.” He opened the book. “Let me read a little. It’s amazing that an Englishman could write such eloquent Turkish poetry, isn’t it?”

The Emir glanced up. “‘Star-cross’d lovers.’ That’s what you are, you know.” He laughed. “It all ends terribly for poor Khurrem and Alexius, but that’s because they were such hasty children. With better planning they could have slipped away to the countryside and lived to a ripe old age, but Shakespeare tangles them up in a scheme of sleeping potions and crossed messages and they both die at the end, even though well-intentioned friends were trying to help them. But of course that’s drama for you. It’s a lovely play. I hope to be able to see it performed some day.”

He put the book aside. They both were staring at him.

To Michael he said, “I’ve arranged for you to defect to Turkey. Ismet Akif will give you a writ of political asylum. What happens between you and Selima is of course entirely up to you and Selima, but in the name of Allah I implore you not to make as much of a shambles of it as Khurrem and Alexius did. Istanbul’s not such a bad place to live, you know. No, don’t look at me like that! If she can put up with a ninny like you, you can manage to get over your prejudices against Turks. You asked for all this, you know. You didn’t have to fall in love with her.”

“Sir, I—I—”

Michael’s voice trailed away.

The Emir said, “Take him out of here, will you, Selima?”

“Come,” she told the gawking Englishman. “We need to talk, I think.”

“I—I—”

The Emir gestured impatiently. Selima’s hand was on Michael’s wrist, now. She tugged, and he followed. The Emir looked after them until they had gone down the stairs.

Then he clapped his hands.

“Ali Pasha!”

The vizier appeared so quickly that there could be no doubt he had been lurking just beyond the ornate doorway.

“Majesty?”

“We have to clear this place out a little,” the Emir said. “This crocodile—this absurd giraffe—find an appropriate charity and donate them, fast. And these hippo skulls, too. And this, and this, and this—”

“At once, majesty. A clean sweep.”

“A clean sweep, yes.”

A cool wind was blowing through the palace now, after the rains. He felt young, strong, vigorous. Life was just beginning, finally. Later in the day he would visit the lions at their pit.