Princess Awele knew the real father of the child they were fighting over. The fighters were her brother, prince Adebiyi, and the palace resident, Akile, who had been of good service to the king over the many years of his residence especially during wars.

It was a hot afternoon. The empire’s men and women, young and old, filled the yard like palm seeds around a palm tree.

Princess Awele sat quietly, her eyes scanning from one corner to another. She sat at a distance for it was better to sit among the commoners than to sit among the chiefs and stepmothers, those who would remind her that her bride price had been paid and she didn't deserve listening ears in her father's house. She remembered when she was a kid of about six and up to her maiden years when she would sit at the feet of the king’s chair. She was adoration to the throne. The king would call her to sit as a beautiful princess and let the visitors smile at her and praise the king for such a goddess.  But, quickly, things changed when she got married five years ago. 

Princess Awele's brother, Prince Adebiyi stood in the middle of the yard facing Akile. Akile stared at him, each bearing his sheath by his waist. Father does not deserve this, princess Awele thought; his first son shouldn’t be fighting a palace residence over who the father of a boy is. The king was getting old, his time running out like the oil of a clay lamp. He didn’t deserve this kind of gormless scene, this kind of commotion at the king’s palace. When she looked at the old man’s face, she could see the pain but no shame as she had expected.

Princess Awele was the first child and daughter of the king. She, by virtue of her age, used to be the most honourable of the king’s children. For many reasons, this was not agreed upon by the whole men and women, stepmothers and stepdaughters and stepsons of the empire. Awele believed marrying a man from another town would solve the problem. Her marriage was the decline of her position as a respected princess. 

After she got married and left the palace, Adebiyi could have earned his reverence because he was a man but he squandered it. She heard that he drank too much wine and would be carried home. He slept with widows on the dry mud when he thought the empire was asleep. He made passes at the maidens and women and even the married. Even the guards secretly said he demanded too much of them. This made people looked forward to Adeponmile, his stepbrother, the next son of the king as the most respected. 

Prince Adeponmile was the calm and the peaceful man that every parent wanted as a son. He would not step on people’s hen. He wouldn’t seat at the palm wine shed and drink more than half a calabash all evening. He wouldn’t pry in matters that do not stop him from walking away into the forest to hunt for game. This kind of life fit a good son but it didn’t fit the most respected prince in the empire, someone who could lead the town to war, someone who could speak at the top of his voice when the people were crying.

Princess Awele sniffed, remembering how she came back to the palace. Death had taken away her husband, the prince of neighbouring town after five years of marriage. They had two sons. One morning, the natives had seized her by the shoulder and sent her packing, cursing her as evil and demonic. She remembered the bitterness of it all, the reviling, with claims that her charm as a woman was too much.

She wondered why she had so much influence as a woman wherever she went. ‘I don’t know,’ she had cried to her husband one night. He had smiled and told her, she looks like a goddess. She agreed about it for she had seen men froze in speech when she walked past. She had smelled envy and seen hatred in the eyes of women. Her father used to tell her she was the daughter of Queen Idia, the great queen, the beauty of the past on which other women asked the gods to give them half of her beauty.  Although she believed her reality, she didn’t see it as her weapon. She remembered her mother’s advice which she had taken to heart: ‘beauty does not make a woman, it is a privileged and you as a princess is privileged… support your husband and the empire always in your own little way.’

Defend the empire in your own little way. To do that, she loved her father, the ruler of the empire. To do that, one time, she had gathered a team of women, slaves and maid; they prepared the meal and sang the war songs and danced the victory dance and fed warriors during the war. To do that, she followed her father to dialogue with other kings, her sight rendering the other speakers defenceless. 

‘The boy is my son,’ Adebiyi shouted, his bare chest covered in sweat.

‘How did you come to that belief, my prince? The mother of the child was my love before she died.’ Akile replied.

Princess Awele could smell bigger trouble. She would step up and stop the two men from fighting. Her father was old and should not be seeing this kind of things, and she would do something. She sat still and stared around. There were the faces of chiefs and stepmothers, those who would remind her to stay silent. Had she forgotten her position in this house?  A woman whose dowry had been paid did not deserve to intervene in important family matters again.

The wind blew over the yard and trees waved slowly. She thought of the deceased mother of the child, how would she feel in heaven that two able men fought for the paternity of her son. 

‘I will challenge you to a fight,’ Adebiyi said and drew out his sword. His eyes were red, his face dark, his body slippery from sweat. Akile took a step back, held his hand over his sword firmly as though he was waiting for an instruction to draw it.

Princess Awele hands began to tremble because she could guess who could win. She didn’t know how the fight between the two could lead to the discovery of the real father. She placed her hands on her laps and she could feel them moistened on her Ofi. She looked around, can someone stop them?

Princess Awele thought about the source of the trouble.  A boy was birth on the empire’s auspicious day. On this day, every soul stayed indoor from the first cockcrow to the appearance of the moon among the trees, and till every trace of the sun was gone. Any childbirth at this period was blessed and the birth inside the palace was more blessed, such a child was sent as an agent from the gods to command greatness. The son between Adebiyi and Akile was the grandson of another king. The princess had come to visit the empire’s king as a maiden and had fallen in love with the ways of the people. She had decided to live among them. Then one day, the news spread about her pregnancy. Shame followed every woman who did not wait for her wedding night and so she kept quiet about the real father of her son, and she died on the day of her delivery. It was the job of the empire’s men and women to decide who the father of the child was.

People believed the son was Adebiyi’s; he told them in the palm wine shed. People heard about it when he played ayo under the Odan tree. Princess Awele could not believe it for his brother did not have what it takes to make a woman fall in love so much that she would keep mute for nine months. A woman’s virginity is a thing of honour for the woman, her family and her husband and her husband’s family. If she had been raped, she was a queen and could have voiced out. She had kept quiet, Princess Awele thought, to hide the identity of her child’s father. Prince Awele winced and stared at Akile who stared into the earth as though praying to gods. She winced and whirled and steady herself. She turned, barely sitting, and stared at the man she used to know, paused, her hand was over her chest, shaking. She would cry. He looked at her briefly and nodded as though she had a passage to her thought, as though he was saying, ‘that’s the truth.’ She nodded at him and at her own thought. Akile would not stand so boldly for what wasn’t his. He was sweet. He was a man’s woman, a warrior, with the heart of a river priest. He was a trap that woman could not let go. But she had let it go for the sake of the empire and her father. 

‘Draw your sword,’ Adebiyi said, 'whoever wins the fight will have the baby.’

Her heart began to tremble like the leather of a beaten drum. She tightened her first on her chest. Her eyes narrowed on her father, the king. Akile held his sword and pulled it out gradually. Akile would win, he was better with his sword, she muttered and the thought warm her buttocks as though she was sitting on hot coal. She shifted and pressed her palms over her laps, her eyes darting. Her father remained quiet. Chief Ige wanted to talk but the king shoved him with his horsewhip. Then the metals clanged and clanged and clanged once more. 

Princess Awele saw in Akile's eyes confidence and the reluctance to fight. In Adebiyi, she saw the naivety and an overestimated strength. Then she remembered who would bear the loss if Adebiyi collapsed on the earth, left to bleed to death. It was her who mourned her mother's death when she fell on her way back from Akuko River and the queen never got up from the sickbed.

She sniffed hard. Her fingers were moving, her blood pulsing against the veins, telling her to act. If her father would allow bloodshed in the courtyard, she would not allow it. Not that of her brother. She shot up on her feet and pushed the men apart.

'Stop it.' She said, tears flying down her cheeks. She did not mind the people... She was possessed and blinded from those who would say she didn't know her place --- a widow, shameless, sleeping in her father house.

'You, Akile,' she started, 'you have a mighty strength with your sword. Your father is a warrior, the son of a great warrior of his time. And you are the son of your father. Your strength is in your arms and the sword. You are not a coward.'

She turned to Adebiyi. 'The true son of Adegunwa. The heir to the throne. The water that flows and cover entire Benin. Your eyes are the eyes of the gods. Your voice the voice of your ancestors. Your birth is honoured. Your presence is the grandeur of brass. A thousand bow at your feet. You are a future to the throne and the empire.'

She was breathing fast. She did not look like a princess. Since she returned to the palace, she devoid herself of trinkets and mask and beads. It was a shame to be in a father's house after her dowry had been paid and wearing them would mean a greater sin. She would not look like a princess if that would lessen the number of hateful words that fly her way and around the walls' corner. She only wanted a place to raise her boys until they come of age. But standing between these red-eyed men, she was more than a princess. The people stared at her as they would stare at barehanded kid climbing the tallest palm tree. 

'Akile,' she said, 'tell us. Is the boy your son?'

'Yes,' he said.

‘Adebiyi is the boy your son'

'Yes,' he said.

She turned to the King and knelt before him. Perhaps she was guided by the courage of the spirit which was beyond her ordinary ability or perhaps the fact she had understood and estimated what each man could do and what he feared. She knelt before the king and asked for permission to pass judgment between the two. The king waved his horsewhip.

‘Akile,’ she called, ‘prove that the boy is your son. Akile was quiet for a minute before he began.

‘I’m a boy from a poor home. I've been living my life on the king’s commands and wishes. I would serve him till death. But in this palace, I met a woman who recognized my strength and mind as a warrior. We met once outside and the urge was strong upon us. The hour was dark and the humans were asleep. We went inside and did the abominable.’ The crowd gasped.

Akile fell on his knee over the muddy earth and dropped his sword. ‘My lord, it was an abomination to meet a woman without paying her dowry and without the consent of her family. But give me my son and strike me with the punishment I deserve.’ He supported his body with his hand over the floor.

‘Adebiyi’ princess Awele called, ‘can you prove that she is your son?’

Adebiyi laughed and the laughter dragged on and on. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, ‘only a coward would cry to show he owns what belongs to him.’ He faced the side as though something was hanging there.

Princess Awele turned to the king. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘you are a great man. In your power, we would settle the quarrel between these men.' She turned back to both men. ‘The king, the mighty forest that humbles the great hunters, the river that besieged the greatest of a swimmer, would give the son to you,’ she said pointing to the two of them. ‘But he would curse you with the power of his seven ancestors, curse you that you shall be stricken by thunder on the seventh day from today, curse you that this land would not bless you if the son is not yours.’ She said, ‘so walk to him boldly and take your son.'

Akile crawled on his knees to the king’s feet and lay on his face. He said and wept ‘curse me. Curse me and give me my son.’ His body was oily and the muddy earth stained his arms.

Adebyi stood still and stared at his sister. He tightened his fist against the handle of his sword. Princess Awele stepped back from him and the crowd whirled towards her and stood around her. Adebiyi stamped his foot on the earth and without looking back, walked out of the yard. Behind him, her sister was sitting on men’s shoulder, the songs of celebration filled the air.


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