Ilario, the Stone Golem (22 page)

up at Carrasco as the only other adult present.

He put down the box, stepping forward. ‘Is she ill? Should I fetch a

physician?’

‘What? No.’ My knuckles were white, where my hands made fists

quite without my own volition. ‘I realised – I haven’t taken her out of the

city before. A
sea
voyage! Suppose it kills her? She’s so small!’

Carrasco gave me a bright-eyed and unguarded smile, still a little

russet from his previous embarrassment. ‘You put me in mind of my

youngest sister and
her
first.’

At
sister
he blinked uncertainly, evidently registering that I had dressed

in doublet and hose for travelling.

‘She’s a small one, but she’s thriving.’ Carrasco squatted down by the

oak chest, not touching my child, but looking at her with unselfconscious

approval.

‘How can you
tell
?’ The Turkish physician had been extensive in his

description of stools, rashes, fontanels, birth-marks, crusts on her eyes,

and illnesses in general – but seemed to think I must know what

constituted good health.

Carrasco lifted his head and looked at me, amazed. On the bed and its

dais, I sat considerably higher than him; I felt it failed to give me any moral authority. He seemed momentarily entirely confident.

‘She’s growing. After the first couple of weeks, provided they grow

and they don’t get sick, they’re all right.’

‘Certainly she eats enough!’ I might sound frustrated, I thought. ‘Eats,

sleeps, shits – I swear you could set a monastery clock by her! Every

Vespers, Matins, Lauds . . . She doesn’t do anything
else
. Do you think there’s something wrong with her?’

Seriously, Carrasco observed, ‘Your father should have hired you a

nurse.’

He stood, and I saw him glance at the bed again, his flush reasserting

itself.

‘If I remember, madonna, she’s two months old or a little less. She’ll

do more when she’s older. They say she was early?’

Reckoning up weeks, it came to me that if she had gone full term, it

would be now that she would have been born. Looking at her in that

light, her minute hands and ears and eyes did not seem so undersized for

a newborn.

I made to stand and found my knees still weak. ‘How in Christ-the-

Emperor’s name will I manage when she starts moving about! Talking!’

If they were not my blood-kin, nevertheless, Honorius’s most trusted

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men-at-arms had filled the place of family these last months. But without

her grandfather, and with all the responsibility falling to me . . .

I wondered if the attempt to hire another wet-nurse would be worth

my child’s frantic roaring and screaming and obdurate refusal to feed.

My
child.

‘I can make you a sling, for the babe.’ Carrasco shifted his weight from

one foot to the other as I looked at him, and shrugged. ‘Madonna. My

mother used to carry the little ones that way. Left her hands free.’

The blush was not quite gone from his skin. The involuntary colouring

spoke of shame. And if ‘madonna’ is not ‘mistress’ or ‘master’, it is still a

respectful form of address for the women of the Italies.

If I didn’t think Carrasco a man forced into violence by desperation –

if I hadn’t thought him capable of feeling guilt for attempting to kill a new mother – he would not be under the same roof as Onorata.

I managed to unclench my hands. ‘Thank you. Yes. How warmly

should I dress her, if I carry her in this sling?’

My erstwhile assassin stepped up onto the dais, sorting with quick

efficiency through the piles of clothes, and laying out thin shawls, and a

tiny fur-lined hood.

‘If there’s anything more odd than this day in my life—’ I caught

Ramiro Carrasco’s gaze. ‘—I’m going to need to be better rested to meet

it!’

He made a movement that was part shrug, part slave’s duck of the

head, and all amazingly awkward. To my surprise, he followed that with

a smile.

‘Shall I help you with her feed, madonna?’

‘I can do that. You carry the boxes: I can’t . . . ’

He nodded, and took up the packed chests, and in the quietness of his

departure, I began to ready the pottery vessel with a glazed spout that

had proved the best thing for Onorata to suckle and feed from.

A scrape of wood on wood made me look up. Rekhmire’, crutch

lodged securely under his arm, had evidently just stopped at the open

doorway. He smiled and came in, awkwardly dumping the scrolls under

his free arm onto the bed.

‘Are you ready?’ He peered intently at Onorata in my lap, as she

suckled at the pottery spout, but directed the question at me.

‘Yes. No.’

Panic returned in a flood.

I did not let it alter my cradling of the tiny child.

‘How am I to feed her on the
ship
! We can’t be forever putting into ports to buy milk—’

Briskly, Rekhmire’ said, ‘It’s a
galley
, Ilario!’

At my bemused look, he added, ‘Built much on Venetian lines, I must

admit, even if it is out of an Alexandrine dockyard. Three rowers to

every oar, a full complement of marines, the captain and navigator and

109

his officers, and I don’t doubt a passenger or two beside you and I and

Herr Mainz! With a crew of two hundred men, we’ll be calling in at

coastal ports for water and food every other day – the pilot’s knowledge

of that, and the headlands, currents, and landmarks, is what will take us

to each port on the way through the Aegean to Alexandria . . . ’

‘Calling into a port every other day?’ I had thought only of the deep

seas the
Iskander
survived, in the autumn storms, not this coastal

hopping from harbour to harbour.

Rekhmire’ nodded. ‘And even if not – you’ll find, down towards the

port side of the captain’s cabin, the enclosure where they pen up the

animals for slaughter during the voyage. The galley carries several goats

in kid, and three nursing nannies, for the milk, and your father has added

several more to that contingent.’

A smile touched his solemn face.

‘I think Master Honorius would turn the galley into a livestock cargo

ship, rather than think of the child going hungry.’

Evidently he would rather turn a joke than put into my mind the

dangers of the whole ship sinking, should we encounter bad storms.

There are banker’s scrips in my purse.

‘I can’t support her on my own.’ The reality of that failure biting deep,

I could hear an edge to my voice. ‘Lord Emperor Christ knows what I’d

be doing if I hadn’t found you and Honorius this year!’

‘Children should be raised by the whole family.’ Rekhmire’ brushed

his thumb over her forehead, and down to her flared lips, that had

latched onto the pottery spout with no apparent indication of ever letting

go.

I snorted. ‘Without all her soldier-uncles, I’ll be hard put enough to

feed her properly all day and all night!’

Rekhmire’ turned his head, looking mildly at me. ‘Does being no man-

at-arms disqualify me from assisting?’

My face was a little hot. I satisfied myself that Onorata had done with

sucking, and sat her upright to burp her, wiping off the resulting gob of

milk.

‘You have responsibilities . . . ’

I detected something like pique in Rekhmire’’s expression, I thought.

Experimentally, I added, ‘But you know she falls asleep fastest when

you read her old Aramaic . . . ’

He put his ruddy-coloured finger to her palm, and her pale tiny hand

clenched over his nail. ‘You know very well she’s working on a

translation. Aren’t you, Little Wise One?’

A slave is ill-advised to roll their eyes or be sarcastic; I was under no

such restriction. ‘Yes,
master
.’

A thought came into my mind on the heels of that.

‘Do you realise – if she’d been born in Rome, you’d have owned her

too?’

110

‘Dear holy Eight!’ Rekhmire’ closed his eyes devoutly, and somewhat

spoiled the effect by peeking out under his long eyelashes. ‘Two of you.

It hardly bears thinking of.’

Onorata burped again.

That, and Rekhmire’’s expression, made me laugh, as he evidently

desired. Taking my mind from the lives of slaves and their children when

not free.

‘The
Sekhmet
leaves at dawn tomorrow,’ he added, retrieving his hand

as Onorata abandoned interest in his finger. ‘Are you ready?’

‘No.’ As ever, I found it more than easy to give him the truth. ‘It

terrifies me, to think of such a small baby on a long voyage across the sea.

How can she ever survive it?’

If I expected baseless reassurance, I was mistaken. Rekhmire’

thoughtfully nodded agreement.

‘But,’ he said, ‘you’re as far from Taraco, here, as you are from

Alexandria-in-exile. So it would be no better for her to travel to your

home country. If you could stay here, that would be best – but Venice is

full of fever in the hot weather, and in any case, I doubt you can stay here

in safety from your enemies. This is not the best choice, but I can think

of no better.’

He softened nothing, but he did not lie.

I held the tiny solid weight of Onorata, marvelling at her dark lashes

and scant feather-light hair. Like Herr Mainz – Herr Gutenberg – I have

a need for truth, no matter how little varnish men put on it.

111

6

The dawn was not even grey in the east when the household stirred again

for our departure.

Licinus Honorius I found in the makeshift Alexandrine bath room,

when I came to tackle him on the final details of a military guard; two of

his men-at-arms bringing in jugs of heated water to fill the porphyry tub.

Naked, he was thin and muscular, with white scars crossing every area

of his body, in particular below the knees and elbows.

‘Shins and hands. Targets.’ He wiped himself down with a wash-cloth,

as dignified as if he were clothed in more than soap-opaque water. ‘You

need not nag. I’ll leave only two men with you – one as bodyguard for

you, one for the child.’

In the last instance, when all else has failed, a bodyguard’s duty is to

interpose their flesh between mine and a weapon. I thought I could have

refused it for myself. Not for Onorata.

‘Who?’

‘Tottola and Attila.’ He stood, receiving the towel I handed him with

equanimity. I wished I had ever thought to ask for a nude study of him:

he would be ideal, I thought, for one of the more martial Prophets.

‘They have the advantage,’ he added, ‘of looking nothing in the least

like Iberian soldiers. I’ve told them to take off my livery badges.’

‘You’ll take all the rest?’ I fixed Honorius with as beady a gaze as I

might manage. Difficult to exert authority over a man older than I am,

and besides my father. ‘And take the Via Augusta?’

The skies will be clear, the stars able to be seen for navigation at sea,

but not yet as reliably as in the summer months.

‘
Yes
.’ His exasperation was more reassuring than promises. ‘Hand me

my shirt. Besides, I have a surprise for you – you will
appear
to be travelling with me . . . ’

The importance of secrecy regarding my whereabouts and destination

was not lost on me; I could not, however, guess at his meaning.

Honorius, dressed, grinned and led me through to the Alexandrine

House’s warm kitchens.

‘No!’ the Ensign Saverico’s voice whined. ‘I won’t wear women’s

dress; I’d sooner be flayed alive!’

Honorius shot the boy a look that seemed to promise just that, and he

subsided.

112

Saverico, in a dark wig – purchased from one of the local whores – and

a gown I had borrowed from Neferet, was, it seemed, ordered to make

himself visible on the short voyage to the mainland, and as they rode

across the Veneto. He folded his arms across his bodice and blushed at

me.

‘Be cheerful,’ I advised him. ‘By definition, you need not make the

most convincing woman . . . ’

This time Saverico joined in the laughter.

‘
You’ll
travel cloaked,’ my father directed me, with similarly no

apparent expectation of being disobeyed. ‘I don’t want to be able to tell if