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with rage, tears staining his cheeks.
    My mother waited a moment, then went on in a gentler voice. “Simon tells me,” she said, “that you have not been in this classroom for weeks. Don’t you know that it is the wish of your father, the
emperor
”—she emphasized this last word—“that you learn to read?” John turned his head away but did not say a word. Our mother sighed, then motioned to Simon. “Bring him a book,” she said, “the book that Anna first learned to read.” Simon turned andrummaged in a box, pulled out a little psalm-book, and placed it, open, on the desk in front of the boy.
    “Read it, child,” went on my mother in a gentle voice. John stared down at the page, but did not say a word. My mother turned to Simon.
    “You are the imperial tutor,” she said, “and have taught all the children to read. Tell me, why has John not learned?”
    “I do not know,” said Simon. “The boy is not unintelligent.” He shot an apprehensive glance at John, as though worried that the boy might start screaming again at this weak praise. But John made no reaction. Simon moved in front of John and pointed to the page. “What letter is this?” he asked.
“Zeta,”
said John sullenly. “And this?” Simon pointed out several letters in a row, and each time John identified it correctly. “And the word it spells is …?” asked Simon.
    John stared down at the page and his face grew more and more red. Suddenly he stood up, threw the book across the room, and shouted, “I don’t know! I don’t know! And why do I need to read anyway? I’m going to be a soldier, and I will have scribes to read to me! Reading is not for soldiers! It is for women and slaves!” And with that he ran from the room, with the guard in hot pursuit.
    My mother stayed where she was. She seemed to have forgotten that the rest of us were there. “Simon,” she said, “I do not understand.”
    “Nor I,” said Simon ruefully, rubbing his bald head as he did when worried. “There were some children who were pupils of my father’s.” He paused, and I sat still, hopinghe would forget my presence and go on. Simon rarely mentioned his boyhood, at least in front of us children, and it was mysterious and exotic to me. He went on, “Not frequently, but once every few years, my father would tell my mother about his great frustration in not being able to teach some children how to read. Dunces he could understand and even teach, after a fashion, but some of the others baffled him. He said it was as though they had a blind area in their minds.”
    “And how did he finally teach them?” my mother asked.
    Simon shook his head. “He didn’t, Your Majesty,” he said. “He would refund the school fees to their parents and send them home.” My mother shook her head, looking out the door through which John had run. And without a word to the rest of us, she too left.
    I never saw John in the classroom again. Maria later told me that he never returned, but as time went on I spent more and more of my day with my grandmother and probably would not have seen him anyway.
    My grandmother was an excellent storyteller. I would sometimes sit with my hand idle, forgetting to take notes, while she told me of campaigns she had gone on with her husband, my grandfather. My mother had also accompanied my father to several battles, but unlike my grandmother, she did not like to tell of what she had seen in war. She said that war was a necessary evil, and that the sooner humans learned to do without it, the better.
    My grandmother was evidently not of that opinion. Her descriptions of complicated battle-engines, of gloriouscharges, of strange foreigners who used different weapons that we could adapt to our own purposes made her eyes glitter with joy as she remembered them.
    But we also had less exciting pursuits to study. Diplomacy, she assured me again and again, was even more effective than war. I had to learn, she informed me, to get what I wanted out