Ilario, the Stone Golem (31 page)

The sun stood further down the sky. The tide smelled of weed. Jian

cleared the audience and I stood up, brushing fruitlessly at the chalk and

charcoal that marked the front of my linen robe, and handed the latest

sketch off to the remaining Chin sailor. He bowed, repetitively, and ran

off. He might have been holding the paper upside down – I wasn’t sure if

these people could see, in any real sense, how I put things down on

paper, but their desire for a souvenir from the mad foreign slave

evidently overcame their lack of understanding.

‘Are we leaving?’ Buckling my leather case, and slinging it over my

shoulder, I glanced hurriedly around.

Even if not allowed back on board, I have enough to keep the

Pharaoh-Queen’s philosophers happy. But – there is so much more—!

‘For the moment, we leave.’ Rekhmire’ beckoned his clerks, and

swung himself on his crutch with the appearance of calm, towards the

side of the great ship.

Falling back on the Iberian no man would understand but us, I asked,

‘Did you find out why they’re here? Are they a threat? Did the Admiral

tell you what they want here?’

The Egyptian reached out and rested his arm across my shoulders,

letting me take a substantial amount of his weight. I was momentarily

startled. Clearly he found this physically wearing.

But to Jian, it will hardly hurt to have us appear master and slave

again. And that is how he will take this.

Rekhmire’ gave me a brief smile all friendship and relief. I concluded

myself not the only one glad to be leaving. He reached for the ropes of

the cradle in which, it was evident, they intended to lower us to our own

vessel.

Looking over the heads of the Chin sailors, he murmured, ‘I
can
tell you why this ship is here in Alexandria.’

‘You can?’

151

I let them tie us in to the leather sling like luggage, closing my eyes against the distance from deck to sea.

Rekhmire’’s voice spoke Iberian in my darkness, as the ropes jolted

and lifted.

‘The Admiral was clear enough about that. Although other things are

less clear. But I think I believe him as regards this. This ship is here, in

this port – because they are lost.’

152

12

‘Lost?’

The Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny gave Rekhmire’ a look that could have

melted Venetian glass, never mind smashed it.

My drawings lay spread out over the pink marble tiles of this one of

her private chambers. She had questioned me extensively about each

sketch. And now, when Rekhmire’ answered her question . . .

‘Lost,’ she repeated flatly.

‘Yes. And seeking a route back to this empire of theirs,’ Rekhmire’ said

equably. ‘Which, as far as I can make out, is called “Chin”. Thousands

of leagues to the east. Past Tana—’

That name was one I recognised, having often heard the Venetians

mention it: a port in the north-eastern part of the Black Sea.

‘—at the end of wherever the Silk Road goes.’

I think Ty-ameny and I stared at him with precisely the same

expression.

‘As for why they’re here . . . They became lost during a storm; I’m

uncertain where. But they can at least navigate well enough to sail

towards the sunrise, and sailing east has finally brought them to

Alexandria. It’s clear to them that there’s more sea beyond here.’

Rekhmire’’s nod indicated the vast window, and the eastern horizon

beyond the Golden Horn. ‘They think they can sail to Chin on the Black

Sea waters. They have no idea that it’s a closed sea. And that there’s

nothing but land beyond the easternmost Turkish ports.’

‘And you . . . ’

‘I have said nothing of that, as yet.’

It would be strange, I thought, to have no idea of what the Middle Sea

looks like.

True, no two charts I’d ever seen in a shop had ever got the shape of

the lands the same – or put them in quite the same place, come to that –

but the names of ports, the number of leagues and days’ sailing between

them, the knowledge of rocks and reefs and pirates . . . All these were, if

not precisely known, still capable of making a shape in my mind’s eye.

I imagined Zheng He and his great ship creeping along from headland

to headland, as the trireme had, but with no pilot. Sometimes lost out of

sight of land . . . losing his course if a storm made his lodestone

useless . . .

153

As to where they might have sailed before they got here, what seas

there may be between the Middle Sea and the place where the Silk Road

ends – for that, I have no shape in my mind at all.

I thought of the Admiral’s horse. Four or five curves and strokes of a

brush. Like nothing I have ever seen.

Aloud, I stated, ‘They’re not lying if they say they come from very far

away.’

The small Egyptian woman pulled her feet up onto the cushions on

the marble ledge, tucking her legs under her. She leaned her chin on her

hand. Ty-ameny of the Five Great Names might have been a robin’s egg,

with her freckles spattered across her nose. Certainly her eyes had the

same lively bird-like look to them.

‘They’re lost.’ She made the admission with clear reluctance.

Rekhmire’ shrugged, in a way that made it clear that the magnitude of

it didn’t escape him. ‘He and the interpreters and I aren’t always in

accord, but if I’m understanding Admiral Zheng He, his ship was driven

through what I would guess are the Gates of the Hesperides, past Gades,

some time last winter. Since then, he’s been sailing about the Middle

Sea.’

Including the Adriatic. The memory of what I had thought an optical

illusion was strong. I wondered if Leon would add more in
De
Pictura
on how you can have something directly under your eye and still be unable

to see what it truly is.

‘Looking for a way out.’ Ty-ameny corrected herself. ‘A way
east
.’

She frowned up at Rekhmire’, who prodded with the ferrule of his

crutch among the spread-out papers.

‘Is it as simple as that?’

‘Possibly.’ The book-buyer glanced at the Pharaoh-Queen, a frown

indenting his brows. ‘Look at what Ilario’s drawn. It’s more than possible

this Zheng He’s been at sea as long as he says he has, given the clear evidence of wear on the ship. He has trade goods from Africa in his hold.

And
goods from the far southern coasts of the Persians. It would take a

strong sea to sink that ship. He naturally wouldn’t show me his charts,

but it’s possible he’s come by sea from the land where the Silk Road

ends.’

Since there was an obvious one unspoken, I appended, ‘But?’

‘But . . . He may be lying. Or exaggerating for threat’s sake. Or – well.’

Without asking permission, the tall Egyptian shuffled himself along the

bench, settling ultimately on the cushions within an arm’s reach of the

Pharaoh-Queen.

She put her tiny hand on his arm. ‘Well?’

Rekhmire’ looked down at my spread-out papers, his brow creased

with more than worry. ‘Well, there is nothing here to confirm or deny it

. . . but what the Admiral Zheng He claims is that when he was driven

before the great storm, he was separated from the rest of his fleet.’

154

Ty-ameny did precisely what I did, I noticed a moment later: stared at

the palace window overlooking the harbour, as if she could see through

the city’s massive walls, and the darkening evening, into the heart and

mind of the foreign man aboard the foreign ship.

‘“Fleet”,’ she echoed, a little derisively.

Rekhmire’ linked his broad, large fingers, and looked down at his

hands. ‘Which he claims is made up of ships the same or similar tonnage

to this one we have out there. He exaggerates, of course, because that is

what a man will do. But—’

Ty-ameny slapped his shoulder, as if she were no more than a younger

sister to him.

‘How
many
?’

‘His lost fleet,’ Rekhmire’ said, ‘he claims to consist of two hundred

ships.’

A silence filled the royal chambers.

Ty-amenhotep of the Five Great Names snorted, the sound remark-

ably like any camel’s bad temper down in Constantinople’s market-

places.

‘Two
hundred
? Oh, he might at least tell a convincing lie!’

She sprang up, absently turned on her heel, and paced with that

control of the space about her that I have grown used to seeing among

powerful men. Seeing the same gestures in a woman—

As I also rose to my feet out of respect, I realised,
Now
I
know
how
disconcerted
men
and
women
feel,
when
they
lay
eyes
on
me
.

‘Two dozen would be bad enough!’ she grumbled. ‘And even two

would pose a danger. Is it significant that this foreign admiral feels he must boast?’

One wall of this particular room was carved with bas-reliefs and

cartouches in red and blue. At least some of the sculptors, I saw, had

chosen to depict Old Alexandria falling to that Turk who had kept his

defeated enemies in iron cages. Constantinople would never need,

behind its vast walls, to be concerned with similar enemies. But more

than one ship like Zheng He’s . . .

Rekhmire’ reached for his crutch, but sank back at her gesture. He

confirmed my thoughts. ‘Not only is Zheng He lost, but lost among men

not at all like him. I think he lies and exaggerates no more than any other

commander.’ The book-buyer shrugged. ‘But then, we have hardly been

allowed to see everything on the ship.’

I had been permitted to bring only one thing away, apart from my

drawings for Ty-ameny – a tiny cup, no larger than a child’s hand, in

which Jian had served me a colourless and fairly insipid wine. Showing it

to the Pharaoh-Queen had gathered some admiration. The ceramic was

light and translucent enough that when, as now, I put my finger inside

the empty cup, I could see its shadow through the side.

Ty-amenhotep raised her voice to call for more servants to light sweet-

155

smelling oil lamps; she and Rekhmire’ spoke of court politics; and I sat

regretting the terre verte pigment lost in Venice – using egg tempera on a

gesso ground, I might have begun to make an attempt at capturing the

glaze’s pearlescent shine, along with its transparency. Although that is a

task for a master, which as yet I am not.

Masaccio,
making
colour
value
into
mass
and
form
. . .

The master that should see this is dead.

I wondered, then, the word in my mind, whether the Master of Mainz

would also be housed with us. Or whether the Pharaoh-Queen’s ‘Royal

Mathematicians’ – as she named her natural philosophers – would have

him all night explaining his printing-
machina
.

Standing wearied me, but Ty-ameny continued her pacing. I

rubbed my hand across my eyes, the darkness behind my eyelids

welcome.

The familiar drag and click of Rekhmire’’s crutches let me know he

had risen.

I opened my eyes to see him join Ty-ameny at her window,

overlooking the vast city.

‘Sidon?’ he suggested, naming a port that I thought somewhere west

and south of us. ‘They might leave their ship and march home along the

Silk Road.’

‘I wish they might leave their ship here!’ Ty-ameny gave her cousin

her gamin grin. ‘But if I were the captain, I wouldn’t be parted from it.

Besides, can you imagine sailors asked to turn soldier and march all those

thousands of leagues? Never mind what they carry as cargo.’

The lamp-lit chamber was comfortable, even if it dwarfed the book-

buyer and the Pharaoh-Queen with its high ceiling and vast blocks of

masonry that made up the walls. I felt not only at ease, I realised, but as if

it were familiar.

Because neither Ty-amenhotep nor Rekhmire’ take exception to my

presence?

As Rodrigo’s King’s Freak, it never surprised me to be involved in

court business in Taraco, although I steered clear of factions. That I

could fall into the same pattern here, as Rekhmire’’s scribe and Queen