Ilario, the Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  was repeated backwards and forwards in the boat until I got them to row

  me further south simply to put an end to it.

  They shipped oars, having turned us into what would have been the

  direction of the wind, had it not been dead calm. Jian gave an order,

  202

  which was evidently to stand down. I smoothed a fresh sheet of paper on

  my drawing board, set it firmly on my knees, and went back to

  attempting to draw the war-junk well enough that I could paint her at

  some time in the future. Who could miss the chance to see this ship,

  from a distance, with nothing else around her?

  And somewhere on the ship, I thought, narrowing my eyes against the

  sunlight off the waves, Rekhmire’ is negotiating exactly how long Zheng

  He will anchor off the shore of Taraco.

  Because we can’t tell how long it will take to solve this – and I can’t blame Zheng He that he wants to be gone. Our wars aren’t his concern;

  he comes from too far away.

  And every man I spoke to seemed to take their ‘lost fleet’ for

  granted . . .

  The wide-bottomed boat rocked. Jian’s men ran up a slatted small sail

  without being ordered, steadying us where we stood, forty leagues out of

  sight of the North African coast.

  There might be enough of a breeze to move our small boat; the war-

  junk, I saw – even with tier upon tier of slatted sails raised up on its seven

  main masts, and three smaller masts – remained stationary.

  Commander Jian leaned over my shoulder, just as the shift of the boat

  sent my chalk skidding across the paper. ‘That’s not very good.’

  ‘ Caò nıˆ zuˆxian shı´ baˆ dai! ’

  Even as it came out of my mouth, I was appalled. He’ll truly take

  offence—

  Jian burst into deep, choking laughter.

  His crew decided it was worth applause, too; banging their fists on the

  gunnels. I suspected they had not expected their commander to be told

  that. Or not by any man who’d get to keep his head afterwards.

  ‘Perhaps I’m not a very good artist,’ I said apologetically, and had the

  idea then of offering Jian paper and chalk of his own.

  We passed an hour or two exchanging what we could of technique,

  hampered by lack of language. Jian’s war-junk was mostly a matter of

  lines, but it was recognisably a war-junk; the fact that he put in islands we had passed above and below the ship, so that he seemed to be

  drawing everything on one long ribbon, I couldn’t talk him out of.

  Pulling a small version of Leon Battista’s perspective frame out of the

  snapsack, I attempted to show him how it related to what I was drawing

  on my paper – but I think neither of us understood my explanation.

  With the sun descending into my eyes, I settled for adding in a quick

  sketch of a European cog to give me the scale of the war-junk. There was

  not, in truth, so much difference between the high poop of a Frankish

  ship and the curves of the junk’s flat stern.

  Only in sheer size.

  As for how many ship-lengths the war-junk was long . . .

  203

  ‘If it’s an inch less than four hundred feet, I’ll boil my sandals and eat

  them!’

  Jian looked bemused at my mutter. I was saved from explanation. A

  faint whooshing noise and a pop! was succeeded by a light falling down

  the sky – one of Zheng He’s signal rockets, barely bright enough to show

  in daylight, but clear enough that Jian gave a grunting sigh and ordered

  his rowers to their oars.

  I had seen much larger rockets in the war-junk’s hold. I guessed them

  launched from some of the arbalest-like machines and tubes on the

  foredecks. How effective they might be in a sea battle, Ty-ameny’s pilot

  Sebekhotep said he could have no professional opinion on.

  But I saw he took note of them all the same.

  Jian’s crew brought the boat towards what seemed a vast wooden wall,

  when we got up close, rather than the side of a sea-going ship. I spent time in several languages making it known that if a stupid barbarian used

  insulting words, it would only be out of ignorance, and no reflection on

  the officer in question. Jian finally gave me a slap on the shoulder and a

  sip at his flask of tepid sour wine, taught me the proper pronunciation of

  ‘foreign devil’ in his own language, and I thought matters settled

  reasonably well. It helped that he could be amused by my attempts to

  scale the ladder to the entry-port of the war-junk.

  The scent of salt and deep water faded, replaced by the spices and

  sandalwood of the junk, always underlying its permanent odour of sweat

  and cooking. I swung myself inboard.

  A hand caught my elbow, steadying me enough that I didn’t drop the

  leather sack of drawings.

  Rekhmire’, I found; looking up into his sun-flushed face. He glared

  down with unexpected disapproval.

  I thought it best to ask plain and direct. ‘What’s the matter?’

  The Egyptian snorted, with a sour look at the boat on its davits. ‘I saw

  you scrambling down into that, earlier . . . ’

  Between the steps on the hull’s slope, and a rope and wood ladder,

  ‘scramble’ is not an inappropriate term, both down and back up.

  Rekhmire’’s sun-darkened finger indicated the main one of the seven

  masts, and the platform high in the cross-trees. ‘And you’ve climbed up

  there.’

  The crow’s-nest made me dizzy in a more than physical sense.

  Gripping hard enough that my nails dug into the wood, I had found

  myself surrounded at dawn by a vast and chilly circle of sea, green as

  Venetian glass, with the sun laying stripes across the waves of a crimson

  so startling I would not have dared to paint it so. The sea turned

  innocent milky-blue as the sun rose, and I had heard the lookout’s cry of

  a sail, and squinted into the light at the horizon.

  The sails of a dhow appeared, blistering white, but not the ship itself –

  204

  I saw the tops of the lateen sails first, and then the mid parts, and only as

  it advanced to us up the slope of the world did the hull become visible.

  It was that knowledge that we stand all the time at the crest of an

  invisible hill that dizzied me. I welcomed the return to the deck, and the

  illusion that the world is flat.

  ‘Yes.’ I drew a sharp, deep breath. ‘I have. And?’

  ‘Are you trying to leave your child an orphan!’

  Silenced thoroughly, it was a moment before I could gather enough

  wit to say, ‘Her grandfather Honorius would care for her, likely better

  than I could – and she would at least grow up without being watched to

  see if she turns into a monster!’

  Rekhmire’’s complexion darkened and reddened. He turned his back

  on me, knuckles white, swinging his crutch to shift himself down the

  deck towards the stern cabins.

  I am a fool.

  Sails towered above me as I ran to catch him up on the tar-spotted

  deck. Sails themselves taller than palace walls, creaking and swaying, but

  picking up no breeze. I scrambled after his unexpectedly brisk passage,

  past mast after mast, slatted shadows falling across the wood underfoot.

  T
he deck was hot despite my sandals.

  ‘Rekhmire’ – I know you’d climb if you could: you don’t desire me to

  stop because of that?’

  He glared at me. ‘Of course not.’

  Make that ‘tactless fool’.

  Heat-melted tar dropped from the rigging in hot black roundels.

  Rekhmire’ strode on down the deck without being touched. I dodged one

  – only to catch another, streaking down the front of my linen tunic with a

  sharp sting.

  Grins came at me from crewmen hauling on ropes or descending from

  the three main crow’s-nests. I did not need to translate their remarks as I

  followed Rekhmire’ into the welcome shade of the cabin.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ I blurted.

  ‘“Stupid barbarian”!’ Rekhmire’ shot a smile over his shoulder, lifted

  one pointing finger to indicate the crew outside, and assumed an

  innocence as of one merely translating the words of others.

  I stripped the tar-marked tunic off. Grinning in relief, I muttered,

  ‘Fuck eighteen generations of your ancestors, book-buyer!’

  I was careful enough to practise my Chin out of earshot of the crew,

  however much the tar stung.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I added. ‘Where are we? Other than becalmed in Hell?’

  Rekhmire’ gave me an amused look. ‘What have you got against the

  last eighteen generations of my ancestors in particular? And, becalmed in

  the Gulf of Sirte, Sebekhotep tells me.’

  Passing into the first of the airy and spacious inner cabins we had been

  allocated – and certainly I had never known of such a thing on a

  205

  European ship of any kind – I threw myself flat on the low bed, letting the snapsack fall where it might, and rubbed at the reddened mark the tar

  left. ‘You’re not joking, are you? You do know the last eighteen

  generations of your family!’

  ‘I share my ancestors with Queen Ty-ameny. That helps.’ The large

  Egyptian smiled a little. ‘I can trace my ancestors back to the first

  Cleopatra.’

  ‘I can trace mine back to my father . . . ’

  He held his hand out: I realised it held an impossibly translucent

  porcelain cup. I beamed, took it, and drank. The herbal drink was

  bearable, cold, in this hot weather.

  Trace my ancestry back to my father – and to my mother.

  My smile died, the thought of Rosamunda still enough to make me

  cold in my belly.

  A further door opened and shut, and cut off the sound of a crying

  baby.

  ‘Carrasco . . . ’ I lifted my head. ‘How long?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not very long.’

  I scrambled up, moving through the open door into the next room,

  and dropped into a crouch by Onorata’s cradle. Fed an hour ago, not wet

  – I checked – and Carrasco had evidently been sitting by the fan that

  cooled her. I straightened up.

  ‘She’s bored,’ I guessed. ‘Take her to see the goats again.’

  We travelled accompanied by two nanny-goats from the Sekhmet, their

  offspring, and a sire, in case we should need more. Onorata appeared to

  thrive on the warm fresh milk that I fed her, along with Carrasco’s gruel.

  She was, I thought, passably fond of the goats, or at least she pushed

  herself up on her front with her round arms when I laid her in the straw,

  and laughed in what sounded like delight, staring at Carrasco or I

  milking them.

  I went back through, to search out a clean tunic, and found Carrasco

  with his head down and shoulders hunched, as if he could avoid

  Rekhmire’ looking at him. The book-buyer had sat on the wide ledge of

  the cabin window.

  ‘Carrasco—’ I pulled the new tunic on, and realised only in retrospect

  that I had not been in the least self-conscious exposing my small breasts.

  I coloured, despite them now being covered.

  ‘When you were spying,’ I said bluntly. ‘Did you send word back

  telling Videric—’ Rosamunda! ‘—about being a grandparent?’

  ‘That you were with child, yes.’

  He did not say, After she was born, I was in jail, but I could read it in the flush that reddened his neck.

  Rekhmire’ swallowed his own cup of liquid, and spoke as if Carrasco

  did not exist. ‘I’ve been looking at charts with Sebekhotep.’

  Sebekhotep, with the face of a Pharaoh, a lean and wolfish body, and

  206

  an appetite that could feed four men, had served on Queen Ty-ameny’s

  naval fire-ships as well as commercial cargo ships; I suspected he might

  not actually need the many portolans and charts he’d come aboard with,

  to find his way around the Middle Sea. But he behaved as if he did, and I

  might have, in his place – too spectacularly good a navigator, and Zheng

  He might just decide he needed to keep this particular barbarian.

  I accepted the change of subject. ‘How long to Taraco?’

  ‘Once we get a wind? A few days.’ Rekhmire’ frowned. ‘We need to

  have our plans definitely made . . . ’

  The deck barely moved beneath me, although I heard the constant

  creak and slow shift of a becalmed vessel. Above the stern, on the deck

  that was our roof, I heard one of the bosuns yelling the omnipresent

  ‘ Maˆshàng! ’, ‘Jump to it!’, and a thunder of hurrying feet.

  Onorata’s yelling shifted up to an irritated scream.

  ‘Take her along to the animal pens,’ I directed Carrasco.

  He ducked his head in an awkward gesture of respect. I watched him

  go in and pick her up from the cradle, together with the sail-awning we

  habitually tied up to shade her. Tottola and Attila sat visible in the far corner, playing at dice. For all the unlikelihood of an attack here, the

  brothers still slept watch and watch about, except for an hour or so of

  overlap.

  Attila pocketed a string of the odd bronze coins, pierced through with

  a square hole, that the Chin men used as gambling chips, and stood to

  buckle on his sword. Approaching Carrasco’s shoulder, Attila ignored

  the man, but hummed in a low bass at my daughter where she stared at

  him.

  A lullaby, I realised after a moment. I couldn’t help but smile.

  Rekhmire’’s gaze followed mine. ‘Ah. They’re fond of the little one . . .

  Of course, they don’t have to wake to feed her three hours before dawn.’

  If his expression seemed neutral, I could hear amusement in his voice.

  ‘Remind me never to hire an Alexandrine nurse,’ I remarked. ‘The

  Iberians are much superior . . . ’

  Rekhmire’ huffled a suppressed laugh.

  Except that I can hire nobody.

  If not for my father, I would be trying to keep the child on what I

  could earn as a painter: that thought still wakes me up in the long hours

  before dawn, in a cold sweat.

  Breeding itself out of selfishness, I thought.

  Because not only are there sufficient painters of funeral portraits and

  chapel frescoes in this world that I would be hard put to keep us – it would also mean I must work at that hard enough that I would never

  have a chance to stop, and learn to improve.

  If I had a true mother’s instinct, I would not at times hate my child.

  Surprisingly enough, the only relief from that fear had come in

  Alexand
ria, when in a fit of sleepless volubility I voiced it to Ty-ameny.

  207

  ‘Great Sekhmet’s claws!’ She had shown her white teeth in a grin. ‘I

  hated all of my three! Asenath wouldn’t feed; Esemkhebe wouldn’t stop,

  and Peshet was always bawling her head off for me when I needed

  urgently to sit in council. And then my breasts would leak milk all

  through the diplomatic meetings.’

  Ty-ameny had shaken her head.

  ‘Some mothers only like infants. Perhaps that’s why they have more. I

  didn’t begin to love mine until they were old enough to move about and

  talk.’

  It made me feel a little less guilty.

  I felt a touch on my arm, and returned to myself to find Rekhmire’

  frowning slightly.

  ‘I had meant to broach this before,’ he remarked, apparently idly. ‘As

  an assistant to one of the Royal Library’s buyers, you’re entitled to a

  finder’s fee, and a small remittance when your work is otherwise

  satisfactory.’

  He indicated other drawings spilling across the low bed. The war-junk,

  from every angle that I could contrive; including the upper crow’s-nests.

  ‘You intend these as studies for a painting, but I doubt you ignorant of

  the fact that copies will be well-received by Ty-ameny and her

  philosophers.’

  The philosophers having taken thorough advantage of my presence

  before we left Alexandria, I thought I could speak reasonably well as to

  their infinite curiosity.

  I forced a smile. ‘If I copy scrolls you want, yes; pay me a fee. You can

  have copies of these drawings in any case. It’s not like I’m Ty-ameny’s

  cousin . . . ’

  ‘Do you despise spies so much then?’

  It came as a lightly-voiced question, Rekhmire’’s gaze not on me, but

  directed at Carrasco and Attila’s preparations in the far cabin, and

  Tottola’s quiet amusement at the sheer number of things they took with

  them. The Egyptian spoke as if the answer would mean nothing of any

  significance.

  I said, ‘You were born to it. Alexandria’s your home. It’s not my

  country.’

  He seemed unsatisfied.

  I got up to hold the main door open, while Carrasco and baby and

  parasol and escort left the cabins. Not that I mistrust Attila or Tottola, but I knew how little Rekhmire’ cared to discuss any business in front of