Ilario, the Stone Golem (29 page)

with hacked-small chunks of ice floating in the jug. I realised myself

thirsty in the extreme – which argued that we all must be, and I

requested he find more, especially for the men wearing mail-shirts.

By the time Rekhmire’ returned, I had experimented with stroking

Onorata’s palms and the soles of her feet with quick strokes of melting

lump of ice. Feeling the skin of her belly, she no longer tended to the overheated.

‘It couldn’t hurt to have the Pharaoh-Queen in our debt,’ I suggested.

The Egyptian smiled, levering himself across the floor and into the

sunken area. He thumped down, took the baby from Tottola’s hands as

the German soldier proffered her, and put her into the crook of his

elbow. Tottola made thankfully for the iced drink.

‘She sends further word,’ Rekhmire’ added.

My traitorous child ignored me, even as I sat down next to the

Egyptian. She waved her hands at him. He broke off to answer her in

some nonsense-tongue.

‘
What
did the Queen say?’

‘How carefully we need to tread. They apparently don’t desire too

many men on board at one time.’

Tottola lowered the jug and wiped his mouth. ‘Damned if I can see

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why not, sir. That thing’s the size of a city! What can they be frightened

of?’

Since they had evidently been allowed to advise Honorius, both the

German brothers thought they should continue that habit with me – and,

by extension, the book-buyer.

‘The Queen will want to send as few people as possible,’ I put in,

stroking Onorata’s scurfy curls. ‘In case they take hostages. I’d expect a

balancing act between men with enough rank to honour the visitors, and

people who wouldn’t be missed.’

Rekhmire’ inclined his head. ‘She’s reluctant to risk her witness to the

golem. But since you’re the only practitioner of the New Art here, that

leaves her no choice.’

Tottola made a noise like a horse snorting, and glared at Rekhmire’. ‘I

know the Lion of Castile – if you let Ilario come to harm on that thing,

sir, don’t bother coming ashore!’

At his raised voice, the baby stopped waving her arms, poised for a

moment between bubbling with amusement and screaming in fear.

Rekhmire’ slid a large hand under the baby’s arse, supported her head,

and thrust her instantly towards me. ‘She’s hungry.’

It was a guess. I took her in my arms, heavy for the small size of her,

and warm and faintly damp as she was.

‘Ramiro.’ I signalled him to leave the fan. ‘Help me feed her. She

might just sleep through until I come back.’

Rekhmire’ was in the process of giving Tottola his impermeable

bureaucrat expression. ‘I refuse to take responsibility for Ilario – since

Ilario doesn’t just draw trouble like a lode-stone, but goes out specifically

to invite it home with him – her—’

I might have protested at that, but my bodyguard was far too busy

agreeing with the Egyptian.

‘When you two have finished bickering like an old married couple,’ I

remarked, ‘you’ll be disappointed to know I plan to
ask
if I may draw things on the strangers’ ship.
And
where I can safely draw. Nothing like

being taken for a spy to make life interesting. Right, Rekhmire’?’

Under his ruddy skin, I could swear he went a darker red. ‘I knew I

should regret telling you that!’

‘As if you had to
tell
me!’

I broke off, since Tottola was in the process of making a remark

entirely similar in meaning, but more restrained by military discipline.

I was still snickering intermittently, and holding Onorata while

Carrasco fed her, when two or three of the Pharaoh-Queen’s eunuch

bureaucrats were shown into the room by Attila.

If I heard anything of the hours of intense briefing, it fell back out of

my head instantly. I was too busy reckoning up every item I could put in

a scribe’s leather satchel, that I could carry over my shoulder. All tools for drawing, since I doubted any man would let me heat the bronze

143

pallet-box for encaustic wax painting. The leather snapsack to protect

paper and papyrus from splashes as we were rowed out into the harbour.

Silverpoint stylus, reed pen, ink, chalk, charcoal-sticks, and perhaps it

would be worth taking a wax tablet: stylus-lines can be incised into the

soft surface as well as the more normal letters and words . . .

‘Ready?’ Rekhmire’ inquired. ‘I tell you now: if you choose not to risk

yourself because of the child, Ty-ameny will understand that.’

Much
as
I
hate
being
any
man’s
to
beat
or
fondle,
the
life
of
a
slave
is
at
least
easier
in
that
one
is
ordered,
not
asked
to
decide.

I glanced around the great high-ceilinged rooms, beyond whose

windows the white furnace of afternoon was cooling to early evening.

‘I’m ready.’

The noise of the city rose up about us as Ty-ameny’s soldiers escorted

us down towards the quay. The sound was different to Venice, although

I saw the trade was no less intense.
Different
and
familiar
, I felt. More like the Turkish cities along the Old Egyptian coast, and Malta, and Taraco,

and Carthage.

One of the war-galleys sent in a boat. I sat upright, cooled by the

occasional spray. The oarsmen rowed us through the encircling ring of

triremes. I watched the touch of the sweeps, that kept each oared vessel

with its Greek Fire siphon pointed at the massive foreign ship.

Hunched in the rocking stern, I practised a quick charcoal sketch of

the serpent-decorated ship, to shake the stiffness out of my hand.

In a few minutes we, also, will be at the centre of that circle of

potential Greek Fire.

I
have
barely
been
in
Constantinople
four
hours
, I thought, as my sandal touched the deck of the vast foreign ship.

My body was still adjusted to the motion of the sea under my feet.

Every step up to the palace and down to the harbour again had felt as if I

were slamming the soles of my feet into granite. The consciousness of

the shift and dip of a moored ship would feel reassuring to me.

But there was no sensation of the sea on this colossus. I might have

been standing on a wooden fortress in the harbour.

Two other eunuch bureaucrats accompanied Rekhmire’; one in my

former job as clerk. They stood by his shoulders now as he spoke for a

long time to the guards who surrounded us. I glanced briefly over the

monolith’s side at the plank and rope ladder, bobbing down an incredible

distance to the ferry boat, and gave up that route of escape.

The ship’s crew crowded close.

Freaks surrounded me.

No. Men.

But flat-faced men; men almost with the faces of village idiots. I have

been, from time to time in Taraco, put in company with those born

144

witless, or with no voices; only the ability to lumber about, grinning and

groaning. Some of them can be remarkably gentle, given kind treatment.

The ones surrounding me now were barefoot, wearing high-collared

belted robes. They held long thin-bladed spears, and carried short

swords.

A ship of the mad, the witless. I recognised those odd, folded eyelids;

the emotionless features. Shuddering and cold despite the evening’s heat,

I wanted desperately to tell Rekhmire’ what I saw.
But no,
it
can’t be;
madmen
couldn’t
sail
a
ship!

Rekhmire’ stood very upright, his back to me, speaking in a normal

tone; trying as many languages as he could think of.

I knew what he must be saying: Hello, may we come aboard, who is

your captain?

Did
Ty-ameny’s
eunuchs
get
us
this
permission
by
the
equivalent
of
point-and-mime!

Rekhmire’ spoke again, with considerably more confidence.

I recognised the language, if not the words. Occasionally, I’d heard it

in Venice, from traders come in not by sea, but over the long land routes

from the lapis mines in Afghanistan and the east. A dialect something

like that spoken by the Turks and Persians. I understood one word in

five, if that.

The larger of the black-eyed men broke into a broad grin, looked up at

Rekhmire’ – just looked up: he was almost of a height with the book-

buyer – and laughed out loud.

‘
Gaxıng
jıàndaò
nıˆ!
’ he exclaimed, in a completely different-sounding language, and began to rattle off the Persian or Turkish dialect at an

amazing rate. He gestured towards the stern of the ship.

The way to the captain’s quarters? I wondered.

As respectfully as if he were still my master, I murmured to Rekhmire’,

‘Will you ask permission if I can draw as I go? Those spears look sharp.’

Cautiously, the Egyptian spoke to the broad man in belted robes that,

now I could look at them closely, were not Persian at all. The fabric

shimmered. Silk.

Absorbed in the play of light and shade in the fabric’s folds, and what

a difference it made to the colours of the blue dye, it was a minute before

I became aware of Rekhmire’. He waved a broad hand, and gazed

equably down at me.

‘Draw something for this gentleman, if you please.’

I unfolded my drawing book, showed the stub of red chalk on an

outstretched hand, and then – as well as I could with fingers that were

shaking from the climb – managed line and tone that encompassed the

shape of the ship’s flat prow.

The foreign man scowled.

Or I thought he did; I realised I could read none of his thoughts for

certain from his expression.

145

The man smeared his forefinger across one sheet of paper, smearing

the chalk, and lifted it to his finger to taste.

His head snapped around; he rattled off something very quick, very

emphatic.

Rekhmire’ bowed, in the Turkish fashion, and replied. As well as that

unknown language, I recognised some of the versions of Carthaginian

Latin from the western coast of Africa. Evidently everything was having

to be said two or three times, three or four different ways.

‘He wants you to show his captain, I believe.’ Rekhmire’ shifted a gaze

that took in all the Golden Horn, and the great fortress city – in which,

now I thought about it, he must have been born or grown up. And now

to find this huge, dangerous vessel and its unknown crew here, right here

in the harbour . . .

Rekhmire’ inclined his head to the stout man in silk robes, gestured his

eunuch clerks to precede him, tucked his crutch neatly under his arm,

and took hold of my sleeve with his other hand.

I whispered, ‘They look like—’

‘Yes, but they speak like men. Like you or I.’

Rekhmire’ paused for a moment after that last remark, gave me a smile

that only he and I would ever comprehend, and ducked his way under

the wood and silk awning that protected the doorway into the poop deck

cabin.

The ship’s captain was no different to his officers and crew, I thought

at first glance, except for his size; he stood well over six feet tall. His broad face shone sallow in the light through the ports. Looking up at us

from a table full of maps and charts, his heavy brows dipped down; he

had the same small eyes as every other man on the ship. And it was

almost as if he had been facing into a desert wind, dehydrating; or had

been hit in the face: the flesh of his eyelids swollen up and only narrow

slits of sloe-coloured eyes visible.

A close-fitting black cap covered his hair, and his thin black beard was

shaven at the sides, but fell down to touch his belt at the front. As he turned I saw his robes were slit at the side, and that under the plain ochre

over-robes, immensely-patterned blue and red and gold thread shone. I

could not have begun to guess at his age.

I leaned over toward Rekhmire’’s ear. ‘Ask him if he’ll sit for me to