Ilario, the Stone Golem (34 page)

Africa, and from impossibly distant Turkey and Hind . . .

Hearing a very little of the hollowness of that image in her tone, a

shiver went down my spine. I thought of Alexandrine Constantinople’s

thick walls reduced to rubble and dust – but their inheritance, a river of

knowledge, flowing out first to all the quarters of the earth.

Ty-ameny beamed at the German.

‘We’ll need many of these machinae. I think I can persuade my

council to give you whatever funds you need. How long will it take you

to train apprentices?’

‘Herr Mainz’ was reduced to a burbling, beaming mess in the next few

minutes. I moved to stand aside with Ahhotep by the vast masonry

windows, and smiled. It’s pleasing to see someone get their heart’s desire.

‘Master Ilario.’ Ahhotep had his elbows on the window-ledge, the

dawn’s brightness falling on his soft skin.

I followed his gaze. In that direction, I saw there was indeed an open

square of sorts; a public plaza. Great wide steps led down to the city

below – which made me conclude the squat black building that we faced,

now, was that throne room of Ty-ameny’s where the golem stood.

‘Suppose,’ the tall eunuch muttered, ‘he has no time to set up printing

machinae, because the stone monster has turned on the Pharaoh-Queen

and killed her?’

I need not turn to look at Ty-amenhotep to remember how small she

is, barely coming up to my breast.

All of us are that small in front of the stone golem.

‘Would Carthage dare kill your queen? Other kingdoms would

condemn them—’

Ahhotep shrugged. ‘Evidently, if they
can
do it, they
may
do it.’

I protested, ‘And you won’t dispose of it, you won’t chain it up—’

Ahhotep indicated the direction of the harbour with one long clean

finger. ‘Show ourselves afraid, and you’d see the Carthaginian fleet in the

Bosphorus in a month!’

Frustration boiled up in me. I waved a hand at the library complex

about us. ‘Old Egypt was always supposed to be the heart of occult

knowledge. Don’t you have – I don’t know – ancient Egyptian magic!

Can’t you bind the golem with invisible chains?’

166

Ahhotep looked at me as if I were a child. ‘“Magic”?’

Somewhat defensively, I muttered, ‘My child was born by Caesarean

in Venice; there was a priest there who swore
that
was magic—’

‘Miracle,’ Ahhotep interrupted. ‘If I know Green priests. Miracle, not

magic. Yes. The Franks do show a distressing capacity, on occasion, for

circumventing what is possible.’

The eunuch stared thoughtfully at my lower abdomen, in the manner

of a man pondering autopsies.

‘I suppose,’ he said diffidently, ‘you would not be willing to let me see

your scar?’

Once here, with Rekhmire’’s favour keeping a roof over my head – and

faced with a plain curiosity from Ahhotep that I must recognise from the

mirror – matters seemed different.

‘Prod away,’ I offered, resignedly reaching for the fastening of my

linen robe.

Ahhotep took me into one of the side-chambers of the gallery, making

copious notes and little cries of excitement. I listened to Ty-amenhotep

and Master Gutenberg, outside, discussing which manuscripts might

best be set in type first.

I continued to worry obsessively at the matter of the stone golem.

167

14

I woke, finally, to Attila pacing the length of the immense chamber,

soothing Onorata, singing some obscene song that he and his brother

had concocted about ‘Admiral Black-Eyes’.

I
can
only
pray
for
her
to
remember
none
of
this
when
she
grows
up!

He supported my baby’s head well, but he walked up and down more

roughly than I would have done. Every so often he stopped to show her

bas-reliefs, and cartouches painted in red and blue on the walls. I was

unsure she could see so far yet.

‘I’ll feed her,’ I offered, staggering up and seizing a robe.

Her body was warmly solid in my arms; it was no hardship to sit on a

couch by the wide windows, with a towel thrown over me, and let her

coo and slurp over the sloppy gruel that Carrasco thought should be her

introduction to anything other than goat’s milk. Had we been going by

the clock, it would have been an early evening meal.

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

had come into the room. He paused beside me to brush his fingers over

Onorata’s forehead.

Her translucent eyelids closed, hiding the blue of her eyes. They had

begun to remind me of Honorius’s eyes, though not as pale and wind-

washed as the man who had sat around far too many military camp-fires.

‘Ty-ameny would like you aboard the Admiral’s ship at least once

more.’ He wiped his sticky hand on my towel, and smiled down at me. ‘If

you’ll draw for her.’

‘Oh, I’ll draw.’

Rekhmire’ thudded down onto the marble bench edging the room, and

unexpectedly held out his arms for Onorata. I put her into his lap, and

began to clean up myself and my surroundings, while he sat among

embroidered cushions telling her stories of Lion-Headed Sekhmet (who

apparently punishes evil-doers), and Ra Son-of-the-Sun, and the

steersman on the Boat of the Dead.

‘You don’t need to draw,’ he remarked. ‘The Queen would consider

any request about Taraconensis from you on its own merits.’

‘I hope the brat pees on you,’ I observed. ‘And do you really think I

don’t
want to go back on Zheng He’s ship?’

‘I was unsure.’ He beamed up at me. ‘But at least, while I’m holding

your child, you can neither hit me nor throw things at me!’

168

I considered the bowl holding remnants of Onorata’s food, narrowly

dismissed the temptation, and by way of pointing out certain errors in

the book-buyer’s reasoning, threw a cushion that missed my baby and

caught him neatly on the ear.

Anyone who lives at court – King’s Freak, or merely in attendance on the

ruling powers – knows the necessity for every least adviser to have his

say. I watched Ty-ameny recede into a crowd of Constantinople’s

eunuch bureaucrats over the next few days, on occasion taking

Rekhmire’ with her. I confined myself to drawing on board Admiral

Zheng He’s ‘war-junk’, as I understood him to call it, and left others to

study the sketches.

I spent considerable time, when it was not too hot, on the city walls,

and at the gates leading down onto the quays. Drawing gate-guards while

I talked with them, and merchants; children playing complicated games

with pebbles, musicians crouching in corners and playing for coins,

sailors coming and going from the moored vessels. Onorata, under her

cradle’s sail-cloth awning, seemed to take notice of the movement, I

thought.

Neither Attila nor Tottola seemed adverse to duties involving sitting

down. On occasion, both the German men-at-arms would accompany

me. Attila sloped off to see the Alexandrine slave from the
Sekhmet
, Asru. Tottola, on his off-hours, seemed to be working his way through

the palace kitchens.

Something over a week later, we walked back to the palace in time to

sleep through the scarifyingly hot hours between one and five in the

afternoon, and I found Rekhmire’ usefully present for conversation. He

fell in beside me in the corridor, not having been out to Zheng He’s ship

for two days, and consequently rested enough that he used a silver-

handled stout stick instead of crutches.

‘Those twelve ships.’ I nodded in what would have been the direction

of the harbour, if cartouche-strewn corridors and bright paintings of Ra

and Horus and Sekhmet hadn’t got me turned around. ‘The Greek-fire

ships. That’s all the Alexandrine navy, isn’t it?’

The Egyptian opened our chambers’ doors for me, and looked on

while I put Onorata down to sleep. ‘I believe there are two the other side

of the Bosphorus, patrolling Turkish shores.’

I crossed the room almost on tiptoe, so she would not wake and

grizzle. Sprawling down onto the sunken bench beside Rekhmire’, I

showed him a page of my sketchbook.

‘Some of your old cannon on the city walls are bound with leather.’

When barrels are cast, not poured, they soak leather and wrap it

around the muzzle-loading brass cannon-barrels, so that they won’t burst

with the first shot. I’d seen more than a few at old fortresses in the

Taraconensis hills.

169

I hated to think what Honorius would say if anyone expected him to

fight without iron cannon.

‘You do realise?’ Rekhmire’ reached for the jug and glass standing

beside him on the sunken seat. ‘That most visitors aren’t allowed to go

where you go?’

‘I realise that either Ty-ameny implicitly trusts your opinion of me,

or someone is going to put my eyes out with hot irons before I leave. In

case I should draw images again, once I’m far from Alexandrine Constan-

tinople.’

‘Ilario—’ He halted, Venetian glass of watered wine halfway to his lips.

‘She trusts my opinion.’

‘And now you can tell me why.’

‘I have long been loyal—’

‘
No
.’

On such occasions, mere reassurance in words won’t do; I saw him

read that in me.

‘I won’t risk judicial mutilation just because you
think
your Queen trusts you, and by extension me.
Why
does she trust you?’

Rekhmire’ put his glass down. He reached for his stick, pushing

himself up onto his feet. Before I could complain at his leaving, he laid

the stick back down on the bench, and tugged at the belt holding up his

linen kilt. He folded the cloth down before I could speak.

Against his ruddy skin, I saw an ancient white scar, as wide as three

fingers, just above his hip.

‘Come here.’ He beckoned, and reached around to his back.

Half-turned away from me, he looked over his shoulder, and eased

down the pale cotton.

I saw he had a corresponding scar on his back, a little larger and more

jagged. Frighteningly close to his kidney.

‘I was big at fourteen.’ He didn’t readjust his linen wrap around his

hips yet. ‘And Ty-ameny had just reached the size she is now, though we

are the same age. She trusts me because the sword only went through me

far enough to give her a purely decorative scar.’

Cold sweat dampened my tunic between my shoulders and under my

arms.

‘You put yourself between her and a sword.’ A wide enough blade, by

the injury. He would need an Egyptian physician to survive that! ‘It went

through
you . . . ’

Rekhmire’ turned back around, facing me, and traced the white

irregularity in his skin. ‘Some lord had very carefully chosen a number of

the Royal Egyptian Guard who could be persuaded to revolt against their

young Queen. I passed that information on, but didn’t trust the minister

who said it would be dealt with. Ty-ameny . . . ’

‘Decided you needed a career as a book-buyer?’

‘Something very like that.’

170

‘Well.’ I shrugged. ‘I suppose my eyes are safe enough, then.’

The cold sweat didn’t go from my spine. Even jokes don’t make that

thought easier.

I looked up at the large Egyptian. ‘I can see why Ty-ameny trusts you

as she does.’

Rekhmire’ smiled sardonically. ‘I tell her it’s foolish. Just because a

man takes a wound for you once, you can’t trust him the rest of his life!

But she refuses to listen. I am . . . therefore careful about who I tell her
I

trust.’

That made me feel unaccountably warm.

Onorata interrupted from her cradle with a cough. I listened until I

heard her even breathing resume.

‘She could die.’ I gave Rekhmire’ my hand to clasp, so he could sit

down again with more ease. ‘That’s what wakes me up sweating at

nights. Fever. Cold. Anything. Nothing.’

‘True enough. But she can also live.’ Rekhmire’ nodded towards the

bench on the opposite side of the sunken area, at the failed egg tempera

painting of Zheng He’s porcelain cup and those other drawings that