by Mary Gentle
in its wooden box, and slipping that into my bag. ‘Aldro Ty-amenhotep,
I’ve been used to being next to a King, most of my adult life. Not that I
had any power in Taraco. But even a Fool who has the King’s ear gets
courted.’
‘Perhaps even more so.’ Ty-ameny grinned, and tilted her head up,
watching me. As if it were a familiar story, she murmured, ‘Pay attention
to any one man, and before you know it, you’re on one side, and there
are other sides, all of whom have reason to hate you. And whoever you
listened to first, they don’t trust you. I wondered,’ she added, ‘why
you’ve stood so much in my cousin’s shadow while you were here.’
I couldn’t help a smile in response to hers. Rekhmire’ wasn’t liable to
give his loyalty to a stupid ruler.
‘I’m too used to being a King’s—’ pet. I chose a better word. ‘—associate. Kings don’t awe me. That’s sometimes unfortunate. Other lords have found me disrespectful in the past, because of what I’m used
to. And any court faction you like to mention thinks I can be bribed or
threatened. I find it better to stay in the background, where I can’t give
offence.’
The buzz of flies diminished, most of them giving up now and circling
to find the open stone windows. Two slaves remained, waving fans made
out of huge white feathers, and concealing the kind of relieved boredom
that comes with not being ordered to any dirty or difficult task.
Ty-ameny walked over to the window, her thin arms folded across her
chest. Gold bracelets flashed back points of light that left dots across my
vision. She gazed out at the blue sky – at the sun she gravitated towards, I
suddenly realised, at any moment she might.
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‘Divine Father Ra!’ she muttered, either in prayer or exasperation.
‘Ilario . . . You’ve done good work for me with Zheng He. As one of my
court painters, here, you could afford to keep your daughter.’
Having occasionally had an oak door slammed in my face, I recognise
that feeling of shock. Even if this is from a door opening.
‘But . . . Master Rekhmire’ will have told you my business in Iberia.’
‘In broad detail.’ The Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny rested her elbows on
the stone sill.
The spreading gardens below had the air of something Roman. A
stone maze beyond a hedge looked darker, a mass of obelisks and
pyramids that I thought must be monuments or graves. Momentarily I
pictured the ancient junipers growing in the dark, in Carthage’s tophet.
If I painted Baal’s face now, could I get it right? Now there’s Onorata?
Ty-ameny shifted herself around, looking a considerable way up to see
my face. Under that study, I reached out to the silver basin on the sill, water warmed by the sun, and began to wash blood and paint from my
hands.
The Pharaoh-Queen said, ‘And what are your intentions towards
Rekhmire’?’
A slave thrust a towel into my hands and I dropped it.
What?
The slave passed me another cloth. Mute through bewilderment, I
dried my hands and returned it. Not that the droplets wouldn’t have
been sucked up by the sun in a few minutes.
‘Intentions?’ I forced myself to calmness. ‘To help him wherever I can,
Highness.’
She put her hand up on my forearm. Her fingers were as small as a
twelve-year-old girl’s, and her palm sandy and hot.
‘It would displease me personally if Rekhmire’ were deliberately hurt.’
Bakennefi had also examined me, at Ahhotep’s request; both of them
had found something to criticise and cluck over in the stitches removed
from my lower belly. I will always bear the marks. Now I thought I heard
Honorius and Rekhmire’’s voices spontaneously chiming together: Save
the mother.
Ty-ameny’s clear small voice said, ‘Suppose his duties take him to a
different land, now? Suppose he were to leave Alexandria tomorrow?
With the foreign ship?’
There was a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach, keen enough to make
me wonder if Alexandrine food might not be suited to it.
Mouth dry, I thought, Interesting – I would sooner he didn’t leave.
Rekhmire’ no longer owns me as a slave. He brought me to Alexandria
because he needed to come here himself. Yes, he will help solve the
problem of Aldra Videric, but – not, perhaps, personally.
I must look bewildered and stupid, I realised, but I could find no
words for this realisation I would have preferred to avoid.
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The Pharaoh-Queen studied me with a sparrow-like tilt to her head. I
thought it an even throw of the dice whether she would accept my
silence, or have one of the sandal-hurling outbursts of temper that Egypt
seems to permit its female rulers.
‘Great Queen.’ I wiped my hand over my face. Spots of colour told me
I had missed spatters; I doused my fingers in the bowl and wiped water
over my skin again. ‘I . . . would still wish to help him.’
She gave a decided nod.
‘We should talk of the future.’ Her features a mask of distaste, she
raised her free hand a fraction. ‘Elsewhere.’
The nearest slave crossed the room instantly and bowed, giving her a
scented cloth. I avoided the slave’s eye. Even with the stone surface
sluiced down, the stink of the dead slave still hung in this room. If this slave dies of age or sickness here, will he end up opened on a stone table?
‘Bakennefi Aa wouldn’t mind a look under my skin,’ I said before I knew I was to be quite so honest.
Queen Ty-ameny frowned at me over her silk kerchief.
‘I do hope you’re careful about taking food and drink around him . . . ’
Rekhmire’ entered the chamber just as Queen Ty-ameny of the Five
Great Names doubled up, giggling like a schoolgirl.
I folded my arms.
At Rekhmire’’s raised brow, Ty-ameny pointed at me, waved a hand
weakly in dismissal of the matter, and shot me a glance with more
genuine apology than I have ever had from King Rodrigo.
‘It’s hardly fair,’ she murmured. ‘I’m Alexandria’s queen; how much
free interchange can there be between a queen and any other man or
woman?’
Before I thought, I said, ‘That’s what I tell my slave.’
Rekhmire’’s rumbled louder comment drowned me out. ‘That’s why I
freed Ilario, cousin.’
The tiny woman smiled wryly. ‘Well, no man is going to free me from
the throne. And I don’t think I would let them. Very well: we need to
talk. The matter of Zheng He must be settled soon – before there is more
trouble from Carthage.’
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16
Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny of the Five Great Names sat small and erect,
among cushions embroidered in blue and gold with her lineal ancestor
Ra the Sun-God of Old Egypt.
The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, at last on shore, sat on her right-hand
side, on the ochre marble ledge of the sunken area of her Council
chamber, Jian beside him. Rekhmire’ was next to Ty-ameny, then I on
Rekhmire’’s left hand, with half the eunuch bureaucracy beyond me.
Zheng He’s other off
icers and Alexandria’s sea-captains and army-
generals, at the end of the great chamber, shared space with Ty-ameny’s
natural philosophers and Royal Mathematicians, who kept papers and
instruments and charts beside them on the low seat.
The Alexandrines might be old, young, fat, thin, eunuch, or –
occasionally – intact male. What they all had in common was an intensity
of gaze when it came to Zheng He.
Absently, I began to sketch Ty-ameny on the virgin wax surface of my
tablet. She wore a gold mask that included the shape of a beard; less hot,
I thought, to tie over her face than the hair-replica. I put the lines of Zheng He in beside her to give scale. She barely came up to his shoulder.
She is the only woman in the room. If you do not count the half of me.
I pushed other concerns out of my mind.
Because if Videric can reach out to harm me in the middle of Ty-
ameny’s court in Alexandria, I may as well give up now.
In fact, there was little enough said over the next hour that had not
been said between Rekhmire’ and Admiral Zheng He on the great war-
junk. I came to the conclusion that the Admiral wanted to hear it from
the mouth of – as he called her – ‘the Great Foreign Empress’.
Rekhmire’ himself finally caught Ty-ameny’s eye, and hauled forward
one of the sea-charts.
‘In fact, noble Admiral, it is as the Great Queen of the Five Name’s
captains inform you. That enticing eastward-leading sea there, vast as it
appears, will not take you further than Turkish ports close to Aleppo.
And if you have maps of the land routes between your home and those
cities, you will know that they are still hundreds of leagues distant from
it; perhaps thousands.’
And full of Turks and Persians, though Rekhmire’ said nothing of
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that. Ty-ameny might suppose this foreigner ultimately an ally of those
more eastern powers.
Zheng He grunted, leaned forward to study the map, and waved Jian’s
formal polite thanks aside, interrupting his subordinate. ‘Yes, I see, but
why would I believe?’
Ty-ameny’s face behind the mask would be fascinating to draw, I
thought regretfully.
Rekhmire’ smiled, inclining his head. ‘Because if the Black Sea were
the way to your home, New Alexandria would be asking you to pay the
fee to pass the Bosphorus, great Admiral. As we do with all vessels
passing to trade in the Black Sea.’
‘And you don’t charge us a fee in any case? And send us through and
keep silent about—’ Zheng He waved a huge hand at the charts. ‘—this
bounded Black Sea of yours?’
Ty-ameny’s voice issued from behind the full curved mouth of the
golden mask of Ra. ‘There is a reasonable chance that you and your ship
would afterwards return here.’
Her rich tone showed her definitely amused, to anyone who knew her.
Rekhmire’ smoothly added, ‘This is the only route into, and out of, the
closed sea. Forgive the Great Queen of the Five Names if she doesn’t
desire to have you and your great ship back here angry at perceived
treachery. That would hardly be worth anything we could extort from
you now.’
Zheng He slapped his thigh. His officers obediently laughed. I saw a
certain relaxation go through Ty-ameny’s commanders. Having used up
almost all the wax surface of my tablets, I set myself to detailing the
embroidery on Zheng He’s high collar, and the lines around his eyes and
mouth that signified amused satisfaction.
‘If closed sea.’ He traced the lines of the Black Sea on the Egyptian
chart before him – it was meagre with detail, I noted – before moving
west to Alexandria and the straits, and the beginning of the Greek
islands. ‘Is this, you call it “Middle Sea”, also closed? But no. Because we
came in. And where there is a way in, there is also a way out.’
None of the Pharaoh-Queen’s charts showed any of the sea or land
west of Crete. That was in no way an accident. Zheng He’s ship might
navigate back from Alexandria, through the long straits after Marmara,
to the Aegean. But after that . . . the natural direction for him would be
south and east, but that would only bring him, eventually, to Sidon and
Tyre.
‘We have not yet,’ Zheng He said equably to Ty-ameny’s implacable
mask, ‘begun to discuss the advantages of trade between my land and
yours, great Empress.’
Plain as the daylight outside the linen-shaded windows: Now we merely argue about the price!
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I shifted where I sat, not able to talk to Rekhmire’ now he was the main
conduit of translation between Zheng He and the Pharaoh-Queen.
It should be possible to find the Straits to the western ocean simply by
following along the coast of North Africa, I thought, but not if no man
was willing to tell him how it might be done.
I saw instantly what Ty-ameny had to bargain with. Charts, yes, but
charts are often inaccurate. What Zheng He will need to get back to the
Straits between Iberia and North Africa is a pilot.
Something nagged at the back of my brain. I prodded and scraped my
tablets clean, and fell to doodling Horus-eyes while the council
continued with every man desiring his say.
Two hours later, there was a pause for wine and light food.
I took Rekhmire’’s elbow on pretence of assisting him, and steered him
into one of the alcoves, out of earshot of Ty-ameny and her generals
socially chatting with Zheng He and Jian and the other foreigners.
Rekhmire’ raised a familiar brow at me.
‘Would you call this a crisis?’ I demanded.
His brows came down, frowning. ‘Potential. I think it defused by what
we’ve done—’
‘The arrival of his ship.’ I clamped down on my impatience. ‘No
kingdom in the Middle Sea has anything to match it. Whatever port sees
Zheng He, there’ll be panic and crisis. Am I right?’
Rekhmire’’s lips parted, very slightly; in any other man it would have
been an ah of realisation.
I spoke before he could.
‘Perhaps, cause enough panic that a King – no matter what difficulties
he might seem to be having with his most trusted adviser – would find
himself forced to call that man back to court?’
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17
I held Rekhmire’’s gaze.
‘I comprehend,’ he murmured. ‘If it could be negotiated for Zheng He
to sail to Taraco . . . ’
My mind raced. I glanced back into the chamber, ensuring no eunuch
or man of Chin was within hearing distance. ‘King Rodrigo could take
that as the excuse to bring Videric back from his estate.’
Rekhmire’ stood very still, his face intent.
I urged, ‘He would. If a messenger was sent ahead to explain to him
. . . Look at that ship! Do you think any man in Taraco would be
surprised if Rodrigo wanted his best adviser back to help him deal with
it? Even Carthage wouldn’t blink at that.’
Rekhmire’ clasped his hands over the top of his stick. His intense
gazed focused onto me. ‘That – would be a begi
nning.’
My hands sweated. I rubbed them on my linen tunic. ‘You think—’
‘It would soon become apparent that the Admiral is no threat. The
scandal around Videric’s name might not be entirely gone. But, yes, as a
beginning—’ He interrupted himself. ‘Carthage! If Carthage was to take
the war-junk as an ally of Taraconensis . . . ’
‘Would that be good or bad?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Good, if it makes the Lords-Amir cautious about sending legions into
Iberia. Bad, if it provokes them into doing that very thing out of panic.’
I found my hand clenching around the wood frame of the wax tablets,
cutting into my skin. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
Rekhmire’ stroked his hand down his hairless chin, his eyes narrowing.
‘This is worth considering. Many ramifications – many . . . ’
His monumental face momentarily split in a warm smile that was all
Rekhmire’. And a nod that was pure professional cousin of Ty-ameny.
‘I’ll speak with the Pharaoh-Queen. It must be discussed through and
through. Ty-ameny has no greater wish than you to see war start in
Taraconensis, and bring every other kingdom in with it.’
He blinked eyes that caught the linen-sifted light, and shone the colour
of brandy.
‘It won’t be a quick answer, I fear. Between Ty-ameny’s councillors
and the Admiral’s advisers . . . But I’ll have an answer. I will. Well done,
Ilario.’
179
I watched him as he limped away towards the Pharaoh-Queen, my
stomach fairly tying itself into knots.
True to his word, time passed.
In those occasional hours when I saw him out of council, he desired
only to rest his mind, and this seemed to take the form of escorting
Onorata and myself (with the German brothers) about Constantinople –
‘A city,’ as he said, ‘where you can walk from Europe to Asia in the space
of a mile.’
I did just that, dragging Tottola and Attila along with me in the
evening’s warmth, taking Onorata under a great paper sunshade from
the Chin war-junk. So that I would be able to tell her, when she was old
enough, that she had stood in Asian lands.
Which assumes she does not stay here, grow up in Alexandria-in-exile . . .
Both Rekhmire’ and the Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny showed an
