The Emperor's Men 8

by Dirk van den Boom

  “I’m fine. All meals stay where they belong,” he replied with a smile and nodded to Aedilius, who himself held a steaming mug of hot but diluted wine. “I can only thank you again.”

  Aedilius smiled back and shook his head.

  “But that’s not enough for me. I demand that you take my medicine right away in the next storm. You’re an old seaman, Köhler, and I can’t quite believe that you’ve been on the ropes in every storm in your career so far.”

  Köhler tried to exude an appropriate sense of guilt. “No, but I had seldom seen such strong hurricanes. This is my first major voyage outside of coastal waters. These are storms of a magnitude only a few Roman seamen have been allowed to experience so far. I am sure that our comrades who navigate to Asia and around Africa will also be surprised by many unforeseen things.”

  “The time-wanderers described the weather conditions in detail in their notes. And my esteemed colleagues on the other expeditions have the same resources as I do – just hopefully less stubborn shipmates.”

  “It is one thing to read a text and to imagine reality, the other to experience it.”

  Aedilius nodded and took a sip of wine. “That is probably true. So what kind of reality will we confront in America?”

  Köhler was grateful for the change of subject. It was no pleasure to be constantly reminded of one’s own stupidity. “If we believe the reports of the time-wanderers, which are scarce on the subject, the indigenous population is most developed in the central part of the continent and in the south. That is why we are heading for Central America.”

  “That’s not what I meant. As I said, I read it too. But as you said, the time-wanderers also admitted that they knew very little about that region during this time. So we’re real explorers.”

  “We surely are.”

  “So what do you expect?”

  Köhler shook his head. “Medicus, we have supplies on board, horses, maps, and we are very well armed. We expect the worst and hope for the best.”

  “No personal thoughts, first officer?”

  Köhler didn’t know how to deal best with the mockery in Aedilius’s voice. The man was known for his wit and his jokes were not always clearly recognizable as such. And not everyone understood his sense of humor. Köhler was ready to laugh, but he considered himself to be a very serious person. Perhaps this was the reason why the doctor liked to try his jokes on him: to lure him out of his cage of seriousness. Köhler appreciated the attempt, but he found that the medicus was better off to choose another victim, an opinion he kept for himself. He would probably need Aedilius one day, and it was better if the man who held the operating knife liked him.

  “I have a lot of personal thoughts, Aedilius,” he said in a steadily friendly tone. “But to share them is not my intention. They do not guide my actions or my motivation. I live in reality, in the now, and when the future comes, I will deal with it. I am part of a large crew, and our commander is an intelligent man. I will give my opinion on facts, but I will not get lost in speculation.”

  “Those who are able to deal with different facets of the future are mentally prepared for surprises.” Aedilius said this with a certain tone, he seemed to think it was his motto in life.

  “If one has enough imagination. If speculations are based on experience, they either remain vague or too predictable to serve as preparation.”

  “You lack imagination?”

  “I lack experience. I have no comparison. Every imagination seems idle to me, Medicus. What about you? Are you imagining all the terrible diseases you will be confronted with?”

  Aedilius laughed. “No. On the one hand, I already know many of these diseases, because the time-wanderers had traveled widely and their medical manuals, which Magister Neumann came up with, describe symptoms and causes in great detail. On the other hand, I rather hope for the positive: new medicines, new active ingredients, new ointments, new treatment methods. I am not only on this expedition as a doctor, my friend, I am also here to learn.” He slapped Köhler on the shoulder. “But I like your perspective. It calms me down.”

  Köhler raised his eyebrows. “That surprises me.”

  “You are the first officer. I expect you to calm me down.”

  Köhler patted his stomach. “Then I owe you something.”

  The doctor raised his cup. “Life is business, my friend. And a money lender never forgets a loan. Even if he never claims it back.”

  With that, he turned and walked across the deck.

  Köhler watched him and shook his head. Getting to know this man was as interesting and unpredictable as the journey to mysterious Central America.

  10

  Une rose, suddenly torn from sleep. She wiped her weary eyes, in which sleep and the remnants of her tears mingled. Her heart pounded. Since the queen’s death and the disappearance of her nieces, she has slept very restlessly, battered by wild dreams, by sudden bouts of fear and foreboding. She felt the sweat on her neck and on her forehead, which was now getting cold, and picked up a cloth that she kept next to her bed, moistened it with water, wiped her face. She didn’t know where the dreams came from and whether they meant anything. So far, she had hardly told anyone about it.

  The guards in front of her apartments had been reinforced, all reliable men, but she just couldn’t calm down. Was she simply scared? It seemed to be more than that. The picture of Tzutz stood before her eyes as if she were still alive, and from every corner, in every room, she thought she heard the laughter of Ixchel and her little sister Nicte. It had been a mistake not to escape the city with Tzutz, she told herself, even though she couldn’t have done anything against determined assassins. In fact, she had behaved correctly and survived, but instead of bringing joy to her, the insight led to reproaches and feelings of guilt that she could not explain. So she slept badly, cried often, sometimes all of a sudden and out of the blue. The fact that she had been able to fall asleep last evening was certainly due to the comforting presence of Lengsley, who visited her every free minute and often just held her in his arms in the past few days, giving her silent reassurance. What should he have said or done anyway?

  It was hard enough that everyone had started whispering about her relationship with Lengsley. Une Balam was not married, so the relationship was basically tolerated, especially since her people had a more relaxed relationship with sex. Nevertheless, she was a princess and currently the highest of her family in the city. If Chitam died, too, she would be the natural successor, the new queen, and that was possibly the perspective that made her most afraid. She had never had to seriously consider this perspective in her life. She would probably let one of Chitam’s brothers go first if it got that far. She was not a queen. And she had no king. Her eyes fell gently on the sleeping figure of the Brit.

  Of course, that wasn’t true. She had a king, but the Maya would not accept him. Women of their class married the highest nobility or the princes of other cities. The status of the messengers was not yet clear. They worked and sweated like normal people, did not behave like exalted nobility. Lengsley, in particular, was tirelessly seen in the workshops and construction sites, giving advice, lending a hand, driven by the need to pass on his knowledge and experience to those who were eager to learn. Une Balam heard the grumbling of some priests who spoke of the “old ways” and “good traditions,” but so far Lengsley had never interfered in spiritual questions. He did not think about these things very much, and that was his luck, because he hardly offered a target for the most important group of the Mutalesian nobility, the clergy. One day, Une expected, the messengers would find a place in the hierarchy of Mutal, their nobility defined, their role embedded in the structure of the universe. Then it would no longer be unusual for a princess to be close to such a man.

  But now they didn’t make a big deal of it. Everyone knew about it. Everyone tolerated it. Who would speak openly against the messengers? The assassina
tion attempt on Aritomo showed that in case of doubt, the displeasure was not expressed in words. Nothing that helped soothe the fear in her heart. She was young. She was in love with a strange, fascinating man who knew things and thought in a way that she found absolutely irresistible. She didn’t want to lose any of that. She wanted a happy future, a big family. She wanted children, ready to learn from her father all the secrets he knew. A very, very extraordinary family, a spectacular perspective, a nobility of a special kind, the nobility not only of origin but of knowledge.

  Une Balam took a deep breath and let it escape intermittently, not yet a sigh but a discharge of tension and pain, and foreboding. Not quiet enough to protect Lengsley’s sleep, who moved, turned, blinked, and saw in the dim glow of the nocturnal log fire the outline of Une’s sitting upright and apparently staring into space.

  “Bad dream?”

  He still spoke her language awkwardly, although she studied with him at least as often as they did … other things.

  “I just woke up,” she lied halfheartedly. It was difficult for her to lie to him. Until further notice, his still weak language skills helped her, but at some point she would no longer be able to use it as a shield against her feelings. Her otherwise convincing acting skills sometimes failed with this man, or they simply weren’t enough. At least that was true for those phases when she felt really bad. Suddenly her ability to steer the man on the path she wished him was taken away.

  Lengsley frowned, raised on one arm, and cocked his head as he continued to look at her. “You’re scared, and there’s nothing I can do about it,” he said in English now. Une had learned this language much better than he did hers, and it became the basis of her communication when the man wanted to communicate more than his need for food, drink or to be allowed to touch her breasts. “I feel pretty helpless. I’d like to make promises to you, but I’m bad at it. I can’t guarantee your safety, nobody can. I can only tell you that I will protect you as best I can.”

  Une smiled softly. She appreciated Lengsley’s honesty, a quality that made him feel right in comparison to many other men she had met. However, she had to admit that as a member of the royal family she had met only a very limited number and above all a limited quality of men, as everyone saw in her the sister of the king and far less a woman for whom one would have to express feelings. The latter was inherently difficult for men anyway, and Lengsley was no exception. It had taken a while for her to get him so far, at least once in a while, to verbally step out of himself. He was still not very good at it, so she enjoyed the few moments when he succeeded.

  “I don’t expect miracles from you.”

  “But I’d like to do some.”

  “The gods are responsible for that.”

  Lengsley put on an expression of mock indignation.

  “I am a messenger of the gods!”

  Une laughed softly and shook her head.

  “Unfortunately, that’s not enough.”

  Lengsley grimaced and sat down properly, hands on his lap. Both looked out of the window at the same time, which here, from the second floor of the building, afforded a beautiful view of the sky.

  “The sun is going to rise soon,” the man said, stroking Une’s bare back, but more absent-minded, like an instinctive activity, with no purpose. “Chitam is expected to return. What are you going to tell him?”

  Une looked at him questioningly.

  “Do you think he’ll need my advice?”

  Lengsley shook his head as if he couldn’t believe she was asking such a question.

  “That’s what I’m expecting. He will be overwhelmed with anger and grief. He’ll look for someone to exact his revenge on.”

  “Yaxchilan is to blame.”

  Lengsley nodded slowly, cautiously, not enthusiastic enough for Une’s taste.

  “You doubt it?” she asked.

  The Englishman said nothing at first, then softly: “I just wouldn’t be so sure, Une.”

  It was an answer that troubled her and drove any tiredness out of her thoughts. She knew Lengsley well enough to understand when he was serious or something was bothering him. But in such situations it was sometimes difficult to persuade him to be open.

  “What do you suspect?”

  “I don’t have anything tangible. I’m just afraid that …”

  “Speak.”

  “It’s hard for me.”

  Une turned so that she could look directly into his eyes without turning her neck and saw that her bare breasts were not drawing his attention. Something had to worry him a lot if he didn’t respond to what he usually couldn’t get enough of. She took a deep breath, but that didn’t trigger the expected response either.

  Now she was worried, too. Really worried.

  “What if those from Yaxchilan are not responsible – but someone who would like to blame them in order to increase the motivation for war?”, he said.

  “That … you can’t mean …”

  “You are as clever as you are beautiful.”

  “Inugami? I don’t want to say it out loud.”

  “It’s better to whisper.”

  “But such an act … if Chitam should find out … Inugami endangers everything he has built up in mutual trust and loyalty!”

  Lengsley sighed and lowered his hand, which was still caressing her back.

  “This man doesn’t think that way. He wants to eradicate Chitam as a political factor. A lonely king, tortured by the pain of his loss. Someone who only thinks of revenge and nothing else. Inugami as a level-headed, clearly thinking military leader, as someone who combines revenge with a plan, forges the idea of an empire. Chitam as a puppet, as a symbol, eventually as nothing at all. Of course, Inugami has to deal with the disappearance of Isamu, whom he wanted to build as a replacement. But on the other hand, I trust him either to make himself king – or to use another symbolic figure.”

  Lengsley gave Une a long look.

  “A weak woman, for example, who is just regarded as someone looking good, able to perform rituals, to bless the leaders, and to give birth to obedient children.”

  Une put a hand over her mouth as if frightened by something. “You don’t talk about me?”

  “I say what I think. It’s difficult enough for me. But you should be dealing with certain things that I cannot protect you from. Inugami has power, and if he conquers Yaxchilan, he rules four cities – and it won’t be the last. If his army of warrior slaves grows – and he’ll make sure of it, I assure you –, he’ll have a power base that is insurmountable. The other Mayan cities have nothing to oppose this type of organized, large-scale and long-term strategic warfare.”

  “They don’t?”

  Une Balam frowned. Lengsley was not like Inugami and some of his comrades. He neither looked down at the Maya, nor did he consider them to be savages. His love for Une had certainly made a big contribution to this. But he still seemed, perhaps subconsciously, to underestimate the Mayan abilities.

  She put a hand on his arm and looked at him seriously.

  “The kings of the other cities are no fools. They will watch closely what is happening here. And they will react. Inugami doesn’t even know what kind of storm can build against him. I would not be surprised if a first alliance of the other cities is already discussing countermeasures at this moment. Mutal is full of spies. They will have reported everything, in clear language. And then there’s still a player that Inugami is definitely not considering.”

  “Who could that be?”

  “Teotihuacán. The city from which our dynasty originated. The city to which I can trace my own bloodline. The biggest, the most powerful city of them all.”

  Lengsley looked at Une in confusion. “I have never heard of it.”

  Une didn’t like to believe that but realized that there had been little reason to direct the conversation to it, especially for Lengs
ley, who usually dealt with other things. For Une, Teotihuacán was part of her own history and anchored as an eternal constant in the minds of many Maya.

  “You will hear from it, I will bet on that. It may take some time fort hem to become aware of what is happening here, but once the King of Teotihuacán’s eyes turn to us, your Inugami should have a power base that is really worth it – otherwise we will be crushed under the feet of the soldiers from the big city before we can blink, fire sticks and the metal ship or not. The armies of the Divine Ruler are not known to shy away from challenges, my beloved. Their will is strong, their weapons are deadly, and they are many. Inugami’s greatest danger would be if Teotihuacán allied with other Mayan states. Such an army the world would never have seen before.”

  Lengsley shook his head slowly, incredulously, as if he did not want to admit the terrible scenario Une Balam was presenting to him. “You keep thinking, and you’re smarter than I thought,” he said softly, pulling the princess’ body toward him. “I have to apologize to you for both my arrogance and my lack of trust.”

  “We’re still getting to know each other.”

  “You would be a great queen.”

  “You would be a perfectly acceptable king.”

  Lengsley laughed. “I would be an appalling king.”

  “The structures of your rule would be more stable,” she said with a serious expression. “You shouldn’t underestimate that.”

  Lengsley kissed her cheek. “The sun hasn’t risen yet,” he whispered. His attention was now back to where Une Balam had been expecting it all the time, as soon as he had spoken about his worries and opened up to her.

  She found that he deserved a reward and moved his right hand invitingly to her chest.

  And Lengsley was ready to be rewarded.

  11