by Mary Gentle
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
paint him!’
With perfect aplomb, Rekhmire’ remarked, ‘Shut up, Ilario,’ and
bowed deeply in the Turkish fashion to the man evidently in command
of this vast vessel.
The squarish man who had greeted us rattled off something, nodding
at me, and the tall captain held out his hand.
Looking at the square-set officer for confirmation, I put the leather
snapsack into the captain’s hand.
He upended it on his desk, turning over sized parchment and tinted
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paper. Before I could warn him, he opened a stoppered ink-horn and
spilled oak-gall ink over his fingers. He prodded messily and suspiciously
at the sharp point of a stylus, until I warily showed him how it sketched
palest grey lines on a paper prepared with fine-ground bone dust. I had
no idea if he gained any idea of the connection between that and the
older silverpoint lines in my sketchbook that had turned brown.
He flicked through the sewn-together pad of sketch paper with
nothing I could read in his expression. It was not a new book, I realised,
embarrassed, as he stopped momentarily at a few lines that held
something of Onorata’s sleeping face.
‘Eh.’ He beckoned, took my sleeve, and led me round the immense
map table.
There were papers and brushes neatly spread out on his desk, and
shallow white dishes. He tipped water onto a flat slate and took up a
black stick, grinding one end on the surface as if he ground pigments.
The brush he used to take up the wet blackness was not of familiar
animal hair. I bent close, observing how he divided his pigment among
pots with great or little amounts of water.
The scent was unfamiliar but distinctive.
He felt my sketchbook with his thumb, shook his head, and drew up a
sheet of his own very fine, light paper. With a look of intense
concentration, he dipped his brush first in water, and then less deeply in
liquid pigment, and less deeply still in the deepest black. The curve of his
wrist was very quick with that last: I just caught that he touched not the
whole of his brush, but either side, in turn, very lightly.
Two, three, four strokes. No more than six at most, black, the brush
held at different angles—
A shape glistened on the paper. Differential pigment made it
miraculous: pale and dark lines drawn with the same swirl of a brush.
Graduating from ink-black through pale grey to grey pearl.
Recognition snapped into my mind.
‘Horse!’ My voice squeaked embarrassingly.
As solid as if it lived, the mane and tail of a galloping horse shaped the
wind. All its hooves raised off the earth, except for one – and that one, I
saw as I peered closely, was not on the ground, but on the back of a
flying bird.
It was as if he painted darkness and used it to carve light out of the page. A horse in such living movement that I almost felt it.
Rekhmire’, his clerks, and this captain’s officer all watched me.
There were other sketchbooks tumbled out of my snapsack; I fumbled
one up, and thumbed through until I found what I wanted.
‘There! Horse!’
Done months ago in Rome: carts setting off with Honorius’s luggage.
Here, a cart-horse with every muscle bunched and clenched as it began
to shift the dead weight of the vehicle . . . Done in red chalk, or at least
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half-done; unfinished, but the study of the forequarters had some virtue
to it, so I had not thrown it away.
The captain exclaimed loudly.
I suspected I’d learned the word horse, when I could get my ear around
it.
He beamed down at me. I realised I was grinning back at him like an
idiot.
Behind me, Rekhmire’ respectfully spoke in the Turkish dialect, and
the large foreign captain frowned thoughtfully. After a moment he jerked
his head; I wasn’t sure whether it was assent or negation.
‘Cheng Ho.’ He leaned down, looking into my face intensely. He
spoke again: this time I might have represented it as ‘Zheng He.’
Guessing, I copied Rekhmire’’s bow. ‘Ilario Honorius.’
He couldn’t fit his tongue around the words. He planted one large
hand flat on the page of my sketchbook. More exchange of words in a
number of different languages took place between him and Rekhmire’,
while Zheng He – if that was a name, and not a rank – paged through my
book of drawings.
Rekhmire’ finally said smoothly, in Iberian, ‘Zheng He, the Admiral of
the Ocean Seas, desires you to show him what you draw before you leave
the ship. I suspect he’ll destroy anything that he doesn’t want known
about.’
A trickle of cold permeated my belly. ‘Don’t let him get any ideas
about putting out the artist’s eyes, along with the preliminary sketches.’
Rekhmire’ muttered something. For a second I saw him look genuinely
appalled, before a diplomatic blandness reasserted itself.
In that Iberian dialect which it was unlikely his clerks spoke, never
mind these foreigners, he asked, ‘Is that what you were threatened with
in Taraco?’
‘And it could have been done. Easily. Could you tell him I’m not a
slave? Make sure you tell him that!’
Rekhmire’ reverted to Turkish, in which I could pick out the word for
slave and not much else. Then Carthaginian Latin, in an odd accent.
After two or three exchanges with the large foreigner, Rekhmire’ bowed,
looked momentarily puzzled, and gestured for me to take back my book.
‘The Admiral Zheng says every man is a slave. He himself is the
humble slave of Emperor – “Zhu Di”, I think. Zhu Di of the Chin. Or of
Chin. He, ah . . . ’
Rekhmire’’s brows rose as the foreign admiral added something.
‘He says, this is the first civilised country he’s found in two years of sailing. Because the bureaucrats sent to meet him are slaves and eunuchs,
as they should be.’
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If we hadn’t been in a foreign ship’s cabin, surrounded by clerks and
Zheng He’s armed sailors, I thought Rekhmire’ would have howled with
laughter. When something hits his sense of humour, it affects him
strongly.
‘You can tell the Pharaoh-Queen she did something right, then.’ I
barely managed not to grin myself. ‘Should I go draw things before he
realises I’m – not exactly what he thinks?’
‘That might be wise.’ Rekhmire’ bowed to the Admiral, and mur-
mured, aside, ‘Do try not to get killed while we’re aboard.’
‘This ship has more arbalests on its deck than your entire navy; if these
people didn’t want something, they’d be using them!’
His brow rose again. Why he would think – with Honorius for a father;
with King Rodrigo’s training – that I wouldn’t take automatic notice of
armaments?
The Admiral rattled off something in the oddly-toned language. He
wiped his fingers on a cloth, surveyed his desk, swept up a small box and
tipped the contents into his hand. Small gold-marked sticks, oval in
cross-section, black and red – belatedly I recognised his ink-sticks. He let
them slide and click back into the box, and thrust it into my hand.
He wants me to draw! I all but shouted aloud.
He spoke urgently again, and finished by pointing at the squarely-built
officer, and then at me.
‘ Dong ma? ’
That was do you understand? as plainly as I had ever heard it. I bowed.
‘Thank you, Admiral Zheng He.’
I went out in the company of my minder.
An hour later, I had the smart idea of sending in to Rekhmire’’s scribes
to borrow more of their paper, since I’d run out.
I persuaded Jian (my guess at the pronunciation of the squarely-built
officer’s name) that this would do no harm. Talking to each other, each
in our own languages, I’d added what I thought were ‘yes’ – shı`de or haô
de – and an all-purpose apology, duı`bùqıˆ, ‘sorry’, to my vocabulary. If I hadn’t found the word for ‘no’, that was because I found he didn’t often
like to use it. Jian would distract me, or misunderstand me, or carefully
not hear me, if anything requiring a refusal arose. I wondered if that was
him, or the Chin in general.
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There was also huńdàn, but I suspected I hadn’t been intended to hear
that one. Certainly Jian hustled me away from the lower deck tiers where
one of the anonymous oarsmen threw it after me. I stored it away for a
useful insult, when I could find out whether it was on the order of
friendly abuse, or something certain to start a fight to the death. It pays
to find that out beforehand.
I smiled, thinking of Honorius; he’d appreciate another foreign oath.
The ship was a marvel.
What I took to be other officers muttered, seeing me draw the outlines
of sails and hull, and broke out into outright complaint when I sketched
the swivel-based arbalests they had mounted on the decks, and the exact
number of masts and cross-trees.
Jian screeched at them, highly-pitched as a hawk.
What he said, I didn’t know: I suspect it was Our captain sees no sense in hiding what any man in this city can see if they sail a dhow past our moorings! Although that was not true of the interior cabins, with their great Turkish-style pillows on the mats instead of Frankish or North
African furniture; or of the interminable storerooms and holds, that
carried food and water enough to allow Ty-ameny’s generals to make a
guess at what crew the ship carried.
If it’s under five thousand men, I’ll eat my chalk, I reflected, and
yelped and shot up into the air as a hand went up my linen tunic from
the rear.
Whoever it was behind went over with a scream. The old reflexes of
slavehood either keep one perfectly still under assault, because it may be
a master, or lash out, because it may be another slave. My reflexes
evidently didn’t think I had a master on this ship.
I swung around to face a gang of twenty or thirty of the foreigners, as
well as the one writhing on the deck and clutching his knee.
Before I could speak, the officer Jian beat his way through the crowd
with the use of a short wooden stick. Thankfully, I saw he had a clutch of
paper in his other fist. I stepped forward to take the sheets from him,
and, as he yelled at me, to mime what had happened.
The deck around us sounded like a mews when the falcons have been
disturbed; all high screeches that set the nerves and blood on edge. I slid
my hand into my satchel, putting my hand on my pen knife – a blade less
than an inch long, but made of such quality metal, and taking such an
edge, that it would go through any man’s jugular if I merely brushed his
throat.
Jian thwacked two of the nearer sailors with his staff, kicked the man
on the deck, and over his loud screaming, evidently ordered the others to
drag him away. Whether to punishment or medical treatment was
unclear. Jian swung on his heel, exclaimed ‘ Duı`bùqıˆ! ’ as clearly as he evidently could, and scratched at his tied-back hair, plainly puzzled at
how to get through to me.
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With as much of what I could remember of Turkish, Carthaginian
Latin, and the Venetian trade patois, I attempted to describe the assault.
Jian finally beamed, and nodded. He tried several languages, before a
combination allowed him to make himself almost understood. ‘You are
not a masterless slave?’
I opened my mouth to try every word for ‘freeman’ I could remember,
thought of Rekhmire’ repeating we are all eunuch slaves here, and settled for pointing at the main cabin. ‘Master Rekhmire’.’
The Egyptian name puzzled him until I mimed someone taller,
broader, and – with a chop of the edge of my hand, down at kilt-level –
eunuch. Jian grinned.
I pointed at the steps leading up to the rear poop deck, gestured for
Jian to sit, and tapped my chalk against the new paper.
I was still sitting there, drawing yet another of the surrounding crowd
of sailors, when Rekhmire’ came out to find me.
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.
Fal
ling 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?’
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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.’
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‘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
