Robert Silverberg - Lion Time in Timbuctoo

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.”