Emperor's Winding Sheet by Jill Paton Walsh

called for Stephanos to translate the boy’s words for him. The boy waited, still kneeling. He half expected the Emperor to be angry; he only seemed sad.
    Stephanos said, “He would have me tell you that he cannot do what you ask. Necessity compels him to act as he would rather not. He says that surely in the necessities of life we should see the inscrutable will of God.”
    Vrethiki cried out despairingly, “I will see nobody’s will in it but his! Is it God’s will that princes should enslave helpless strangers?”
    â€œI won’t translate that!” cried Stephanos, his voice thick with anger. “How can you lay this burden upon him, when he has already so much to carry?”
    The boy said nothing for a moment, wholly astonished by the idea that the Emperor needed defending—against him. In the silence, the Emperor gently touched a lock of the boy’s hair, turned away, and went to his prayers.
    â€œVrethiki,” said Stephanos, urgently. “Listen to me. Try to understand. What you cannot avoid in life, you must accept with dignity. Men are not judged by the fate God appoints for them, they are judged by the manner in which they meet that fate. What has happened to you has happened; you will only bruise yourself by fighting against it.”
    The boy did not reply. His face did not relent from its wild and sullen expression. He was still kneeling before the spot where the Emperor had stood.
    â€œListen, accept this danger with a quiet soul. God will see the sacrifice, will see the burden you bear quietly. He will judge. He will reward. But if you struggle, if you go unwillingly, you will lose the merit of it, and yet you must go, just the same. Find the courage to submit.”
    â€œCourage to submit?” exclaimed the boy. “I’d call that cowardice. I’d call that unmanliness. What I need is courage to fight to the last gasp of breath in my body. If life is going to batter me, the least I can do is go down fighting; I’ll bite and kick to the end!”
    â€œA fit end, then, for a barbarian! Rage as you like, I cannot help you. But if you dare to utter one word of appeal or complaint to my master again, I’ll take a belt to your backside myself; understand?”
    â€œAh,” said the boy, getting up. “Now the truth is out. That’s your true colors.” And he marched out. Behind him, Stephanos stood frozen with a dismayed expression on his face.
    Â 
    THE BRIDLE OF VRETHIKI’S HORSE WAS LOOPED OVER Stephanos’ wrist all the way on the ride to Monemvasia. He said nothing. For all his angry words, he was overwhelmed by a glum crushed hopelessness. And once on shipboard, he was flooded with grief and homesickness. The last time he had joined a trim vessel, it had been riding at anchor in Bristow, loading tin and cloth, and full of English voices, and high hopes whose owners now were dead. The Catalan ship which carried the Emperor was a babel of half the tongues known to humanity. She was of a strange elaborate build above the water line, and carried her sail somewhat oddly rigged; butshe creaked like the
Cog Anne
, she smelled of tar and salt like the
Cog Anne
, groaned like her as she swung into the wind. As Monemvasia fell away astern he remembered the smart wind that had borne them down the Bristow Channel, and his mother, dwindling to doll-size, waving and weeping on the receding quay. The Catalan sailors knew their business well, and he took pleasure in watching them handle sail and sheets, though before long he was needed below decks and could watch no more.
    They were hardly afloat before the Emperor became seasick. Stephanos and Manuel were both pale, with that green-tinted pallor that seasickness brings. Vrethiki, rock-steady on his stout trading legs, with the Bristow Channel and the Biscay Bay behind him, scarcely felt the movement of the ship; and, grimly pleased at the sight of Stephanos’ misery and the