Jonathan Levi - Septimania

“Thanks,” Malory said, thinking it had been an extraordinary day to have his cheeks kissed twice.

“Shall we walk?” Ottavia asked, and exchanged a few more words in Italian with the Driver.

Malory stepped out of the car and blinked three times.

“Come with me,” Ottavia said. She opened the gate for the Driver, and then, linking her arm in Malory’s, she led him down the road. Malory looked back. The Driver smiled and waved as he straightened the car and followed. How wonderful, Malory thought, that there is someone in the world who has to stand on tiptoe to reach me. Arm in arm, Ottavia led Malory onto the bridge across the creek and then off the road and onto a track across a pasture, rutted with the marks of tractors and horses and rimmed with the late summer weeds that Malory knew only from the Cambridge Arts Cinema.

“I’ve been thinking about Rome,” Ottavia said, slowing down her footsteps to extend the moment. “A lot.”

Malory said nothing, but squeezed her arm tighter with what biceps he had and looked at the small rocks in the tractor path in the hope they might dilute his embarrassment but not his pleasure.

“Do you know what my favorite moment was?”

Malory thought about the dinner Settimio had served, their stroll out in the garden to peek down on nighttime Rome — the first time Malory had strolled in the garden or much of anywhere with anyone. And the apple, of course.

“That night,” Ottavia said, quick and bright, knowing that Malory was too confused to reply, “when you tucked me into bed and read me a story. No one has ever done that.”

Nor to me either, thought Malory. Not in a long while.

“I slept so well,” Ottavia said. “I felt safe. Not managing, not coping, not worrying about Tibor or Cristina or my own sorry life, but safe.”

“I’m glad,” Malory said. “The villa is really quite extraordinary.”

“It was you, Malory.” Ottavia stopped and cupped a small Malory elbow in each of her smaller hands.

“I only read you something that was written a long, long time ago.”

“But there was something in the way you read. The tone of your voice.”

Once upon a time, Malory had thought about the tone of his own voice. Once upon a time, Malory had tuned organs.

“I don’t know anything about music,” Ottavia continued, “except the chants and hymns I had to sing from Santa Sabina to Trinity. But I know there have been times, very rare times, when I’ve been sitting in a particular niche of a chapel or above a Scottish loch at sunset and the sound of a distant boat comes to me. And all feels …”

“In harmony?” Malory asked.

“If that’s the word,” Ottavia said. “It’s like the moment before I find the solution to a particularly thorny mathematical problem. Even though I can’t yet see the answer, I can hear the sound of its perfection coming from a distance. That’s the sound I heard as I closed my eyes that night in the Villa Septimania.”

“And the answer?” Malory asked. “Did that come to you later?”

“Malory,” Ottavia said, “do you remember the story you were reading to me that night? About the first meeting between Haroun al Rashid and the daughter of Charlemagne?”

“Aldana?” Malory asked.

“Do you remember how Aldana was flirting with Haroun?”

“Would you really call it flirting?” Malory asked, suddenly aware of Ottavia’s hands still on his elbows. “She was a young girl. He was, well, he must have been close to fifty.”

“Do you remember how, at the end, when Aldana was called upstairs to join her father and the others, Haroun promised to come back?”

“Yes, why?”

“Did he?” Ottavia’s hands moved up to Malory’s shoulders. “I’ve been wondering since that night in Rome. Did he come back? Is there more?”

“Just a polite visit eleven years later,” Malory said. “When Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800, Haroun returned.”

“Disguised as his envoy?”

“It’s not clear. I remember there was a note about the visit in the Complete History , but it was written by a ten-year-old boy.”

“Aldana’s son?”

“And Aimery’s. The boy was the son of Charlemagne’s daughter and the King of the Jews. He was the eldest grandson of Charlemagne and heir to the throne of Septimania. He wrote about standing on the circle of porphyry in St. Peter’s after the coronation. Next to him was his grandfather, Charlemagne, and his parents. And there was another man, a friend of his father’s, who had traveled all the way from Baghdad.”

“So Haroun kept his promise and came back!” Ottavia walked a few steps down the track and then turned back to Malory full of light. “And why do you think he did that?”

“For Aimery, his old friend Gan, of course,” Malory said.

“But couldn’t it be that he came back for Aldana?” Ottavia asked. “That he kept his promise to Aldana and came back to see the boy. Isn’t that possible? Isn’t that the answer?”

“To what question?” Malory had an uncomfortable feeling, a residual pain like a rope burn on the back of his skull.

“Haroun didn’t come back for Aimery. He came back for Aldana.”

“Why? Because he promised?”

“To see his son!” Ottavia’s exasperation with Malory was real, but charming, Malory thought, which relieved his discomfort a touch.

“You’re saying …” Malory corrected himself. “You’re suggesting that perhaps it wasn’t Aimery who was the father of the boy, but Haroun?”

“Oh, Malory!”

“And that the line of the kings of Septimania, and queens for that matter, descended not from the line of King David, but from the Caliph of Islam?”

“Why …?”

“And that therefore I, Malory, am not King of the Jews after all?” Malory knew he was lecturing, but the rope burn drove him on. “But as a consolation, I am the Messiah of the Muslims?”

“Stop, Malory!” Ottavia said. “I didn’t mean to get you so upset. But can’t you see that sometimes people celebrate uncertainty?”

“What uncertainty?”

“The boy,” Ottavia said. “Aldana knew that his father was either Aimery or Haroun …”

“But didn’t know which?” Malory asked.

“Aimery was born in the same fertile crescent as Haroun,” Ottavia smiled. “Olive skin, curly hair — Aldana probably didn’t have much to go on to identify the boy as the son of one or the other. And in those days, millennia before DNA testing …”

“Nobody knew how to open the box, or even which box to search,” Malory said. He didn’t expect Ottavia to understand, but she smiled. “Here, Ottavia.” Malory reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small flash drive. “I had Settimio scan the Complete History of Septimania onto this for you. You can open the box yourself if you want and search for an answer. Or at the very least, it’s a lifetime supply of bedtime stories. I suppose you have a computer of some sort?”

“Malory,” Ottavia said, “I don’t care whether you are Holy Roman Emperor, King of the Jews, Caliph of the Muslims, or all three rolled into one. I’m glad you’re here. With Tibor. With me.”

The force of Ottavia’s hug, her arms around Malory, her cheek next to his, stopped him from nattering away. When she was through she said nothing, just took Malory’s arm and led him to a building at the edge of the field.

“This is the Blue House,” she said. “There is a room upstairs for you and a room downstairs for the Driver, as well as a garage for your car, although the space is tight next to the firewood. Cristina and Tibor are up the hill in the White House. The Nurses and the Bomb Squad are usually in the Red Barn. But it’s only the four of us today.”