by Mary Gentle
Honorius shot the boy a look that seemed to promise just that, and he subsided.
Saverico, in a dark wig–purchased from one of the local whores–and a gown I had borrowed from Neferet, was, it seemed, ordered to make himself visible on the short voyage to the mainland, and as they rode across the Veneto. He folded his arms across his bodice and blushed at me.
‘Be cheerful,’ I advised him. ‘By definition, you need not make the most convincing woman…’
This time Saverico joined in the laughter.
‘You’ll travel cloaked,’ my father directed me, with similarly no apparent expectation of being disobeyed. ‘I don’t want to be able to tell if you’re woman or man!’
I thought it was Saverico who muttered ‘Nothing new there!’, but he was smiling, and I let him escape without retribution.
Honorius would have taken us by way of the S. Marco quay for a farewell, I knew, but the importance of my seeming anonymous argued a less public rendezvous with the Alexandrine galley. Honorius and I therefore parted in the bare garden of the Alexandria House, behind high walls, with only just enough grey light to see each other’s faces.
‘Let me say goodbye to my grandchild.’ He took a whining Onorata into his arms. ‘I’ll miss her first walking and speaking.’
‘Just as well, or her first words would be military curses!’
Honorius grinned like a boy. He pushed his ungloved hand into Onorata’s tiny fingers. She shoved his thumb against her lips, making gnawing motions, the crying forgotten.
‘I do wish,’ I observed, ‘that you might come as far as Alexandria and keep doing that!’
‘She’s biddable enough with her grandfather.’ He smirked, sounding very smug, and ended with a sigh. ‘If I trusted her in the borders of the same kingdom as Pirro Videric, I’d ask to take her home with me. I’ve raised no children from this age…Constantinople will be safer.’
Files of Alexandrine sailors and slaves moved past us, down to the other boats, whose oarsmen began to spider them out into the canal. I had a panicked urge to step back and leave the breathing, living child in Honorius’s arms.
If I felt no rush of affection when I looked at her, I could still be taken by surprise by the intensity of my desire to protect her.
The same fear that drove me to think of rockfalls, floods, butchering free-company bandits, and thunderstorms, on the road to Taraco, and made me fear that this was the last time I would see Honorius, paradoxically argued that my daughter would be far safer with him than with me.
‘I know nothing of children!’ I muttered, staring at her darkening blue eyes. ‘I’m not even a proper mother.’
Honorius’s fingertip traced the amazing clarity of her skin, where he must feel the faintest fuzz, and moved to the whorl of her ear. I had drawn that shell often enough (before permanent exhaustion overtook me) to know every curve and kink of it. Sometimes I had drawn it by candle-light, when I sat awake, filled with fear, watching her breathe and praying I would not see her stop.
‘If I hadn’t seen before how soldiers are sentimental over children,’ Honorius observed sourly, ‘I’d wonder why I scarcely had a chance to hold my own grandchild!’
That was so much hyperbole that I couldn’t help smiling.
Honorius continued, ‘As for Attila and Tottola, the further advantage of those two is that they both have families at home. Young brothers, cousins; maybe a bastard or two. Between them they can likely change the babe’s shit-rag if you fall for sea-sickness on the voyage…’
‘That’s good to hear. Although I was thinking of leaving the task for Master Rekhmire’.’
My father looked across the bare earth to the Egyptian, where he stood in close and rapid conversation with one of Menmet-Ra’s slaves. All Rekhmire’’s weight leaned onto his stick, although unobtrusively enough that only drawing it had let me know, through my fingers, how much he relied on that support.
‘Can’t think of a man better suited,’ Honorius said urbanely. ‘I owe the man too great a debt not to want to see him disconcerted from time to time…’
I grinned. Then, ‘Debt?’
‘He wrote to me to come to Carthage. He gave me you.’ Honorius looked openly moved. ‘And he’s sworn that if, Christ the Emperor forbid it, you should die while in the East, he’ll bring Onorata to me.’
That thought sobered me.
Most things that could be responsible for killing me would kill her too. I did not say it. Honorius will know this.
My father scowled reflexively in the book-buyer’s direction. ‘If he fails to look after you both in Constantinople, I’ll show him the colour of his own spleen!’
I wondered briefly what colour a spleen was, and whether Galen had written anything on the subject. And realised that Honorius, if asked, might give me an answer based on far more empirical observation.
I didn’t ask.
‘It’s time,’ I said.
Honorius put Onorata into my arms, and held us both in an embrace.
‘As soon as it’s safe to come to Taraco, I’ll send word.’ He reluctantly released me. ‘Trust no one who doesn’t come with my authority. Any messenger of mine will inquire of the progress of an altar panel to St Stephen, and then correct to St Gaius if you query that.’
Wordless myself because of the constriction in my throat, I could only nod.
‘And I want to see some drawings of your Gaius Judas,’ Honorius observed, as cheerfully as he could pretend to. ‘Give you something to do when you’re lazing about in Constantinople.’
‘Lazing.’
‘Of course.’ He unbuttoned the purse at his belt, and took out a bag of softer leather. ‘You should be able to trust my banker, but just in case. These are all my rings. If you need money, sell them; it’s why I give them to you. If you’re afraid of robbery, don’t hide them in the child’s cradle, or your hair, or your cunny. It’s the first place any pirate or bandit will look.’
I felt my cheeks hot. ‘For a respectable military man, you know far too much about how to steal!’
‘Used to taking precautions…’ His amused tone dared me to doubt it. ‘Most often from being robbed by the men I was commanding!’
The men in his livery grumbled mock-outrage.
‘There are three bracelets in here that look like cheap brass,’ Honorius added. ‘Which they are, on the surface, but scratch below and you’ll find solid gold. Wear those at all times. And as I said, you may use my name for credit, whatever you need; you have letters to every banker I’ve had dealings with over the years. I’m good for sufficient funds to keep you safe and get you home. Understand?’
He fretted like a horse with a harness that galls.
‘I understand,’ I said, ‘that you’d like to lock us both up in a Tower of Ladies at the estate, and perhaps let Onorata out when she turns thirty!’
I understand him to be as afraid as I am of those things in the world that threaten what we love.
Honorius cupped his hands over my shoulders, surprisingly gentle even though he must still find them too narrow for a son and too wide for a daughter.
‘I know I can’t stand between you and every danger. I know you can cope with all hazards. I merely…wish I might protect you from all ills and accidents, no matter how foolish that is.’
I shrugged, lightly enough to not disturb the baby. ‘I understand: I feel the same way about you. And how old are you, Lion of Castile?’
Honorius laughed out loud.
‘We’ll both of us protect the babe, then.’ He held her hand between the thumb and forefinger of his own.
The wind came up from the lagoon, heavy with the scent of silt and rot, and at the same time a warm and a chill breeze. Spring, and I am at last leaving this city: I feel as if a cell-door opens.
Honorius embraced us both again, and I turned away to carry out of Venice the child that had not existed as a fully-human living soul when I entered it.
The light in the east was the colour of Naples Y
ellow as we climbed into the boat that would take us through the canals of the Dorsodura quarter, and out into the basin where lord Menmet-Ra’s Sekhmet was moored. My feet left dark marks in the dew on the canal-side flagstones. I had my hood up, and pulled well forward, and Onorata tied into a buckram and linen sling under my cloak. I doubt any man might recognise us unless he stands next to me.
The creaking of oars all but lulled me asleep, since I had slept so little before. A dim lantern let me see the baggage boat ahead, and from time to time a candle-lit window permitted me a view into some Venetian’s daily life. I could not help but look back when I witnessed a woman pacing with her baby against her shoulder, the raw screaming audible through half-closed shutters.
Clouds bulked up before the sun could rise, keeping the small boat inconspicuous. I heard the water lap and drip. The turn of raised oar-blades just caught the light, letting me know the other boats still accompanied us. Wind in my face brought more than the scent of the lagoon–brought the open sea.
I only realised that we had rowed under the stern of the moored Alexandrine galley as it blocked the dawn like a mountain of darkness above us.
There was a pervasive strong odour of tar. And tar adhered to my hands when I climbed up the steps on the side of the ship, and onto the galley’s stern deck.
On this high deck, I could not help a glance back towards the Riva degli Schiavoni. I saw lights enough that I knew men were working; loading cargo, unloading early fishing-boats. I heard no clash of arms. Saw no reflections of torches from armour.
If the Council of Ten has the Venetian soldiery there, certainly I don’t see them.
Herr Mainz scrambled up the steps to the deck, the German men-at-arms behind him assisting Rekhmire’. Attila and Tottola wore identical fixed frowns, visible by the galley’s lanterns–which might have been taken to indicate intense devotion to their duty, but I thought had more to do with the send-off the rest of the company had given them, a scant few hours before. Tottola failed to hide a wince when Onorata, impossibly hungry again, or else disturbed by the stink of the tar on ropes and deck-planks, began to cry.
The galley’s captain showed every disposition to put me in a low cabin, close to the water-line, at the stern of the ship. Despite its prestigious and secure nature–it was, after all, where the captain kept treasure and valuable small cargo–I balked, after discovering I would have no light except through the hatch from the cabin above.
By the time I had argued strongly enough to secure the higher cabin, I felt an all but imperceptible life in the wood of the ship.
‘I’m going up on deck,’ I told Rekhmire’.
I had missed seeing the Sekhmet as we approached, so that I had no clear idea how a hundred and twenty feet of galley appears to the naked eye; I did not desire to miss our casting-off for Constantinople.
Rekhmire’ followed me to the deck, jerking the padded crutch and shifting his weight with rapid efficiency. I kept Onorata with us in her sling, not simply because I thought she would otherwise wake, but because I did not feel safe leaving her without the German men-at-arms being over their temporary inconvenience.
Pale cool light flooded the arch of the sky. Venice lay spread out behind us.
‘Ilario—’
The ferrule of Rekhmire’’s crutch slipped on the deck.
His hand came down hard on my shoulder, and his fingers dug into the muscle there. I heard him curse under his breath, raggedly and with no restraint.
I stood perfectly still, Onorata clasped to my chest, until he caught his balance again.
‘You’ll be glad to get rid of that.’ I nodded at the crutch as he straightened up.
Rekhmire’ shut his eyes, as if he did no more than listen to the heave and grunt of the oarsmen, and the yells of the deck crew raising the main lateen sail above our heads. I saw one of his hands creep down to push at the muscle of his thigh. He still wore the Turkish fashion in trousers; I had thought it because of the cold.
‘I was not about to say in front of Pamiu or your father.’ Rekhmire’ opened his eyes, focusing on the distant campanile of S. Marco behind us. ‘But–if the Turk’s diagnosis was correct, and if the physicians in Alexandria have no better treatment…Then it’s unlikely I will ever walk again without this help.’
7
I am lost on this ship! I realised.
I signalled to one of Menmet-Ra’s linen-kilted servants, requesting briskly that he take us to our cabin. Rekhmire’ stomped in my wake. I said nothing while any man was within earshot.
The cabin’s thick wooden door closed. The noise of running feet, men casting off ropes, and creaking oars drowned out anything a listener might have overheard.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Rekhmire’ blinked at me in his most feline manner.
‘What should I have said? That I’ll be lame?’ His expression altered significantly. ‘Does it concern you that I won’t be able to act in defence of you, or Onorata?’
Frustration and some nameless emotion stifled any reply I might have formed.
A brisk knock sounded on the cabin door. Onorata jolted and began to grizzle. Hunger, I thought, although it might have been wind or heat. She did not feel wet enough to change.
‘Come!’
At my summons, Attila walked in with a straw palliasse over his shoulder. He threw it down inside the door.
‘One of us will be awake at all times,’ he said brusquely. ‘The other one will sleep across your door. We know you’re the Lion’s son-daughter—’ He emphasised the first term. ‘—but we’ve got orders to keep you safe.’
His eyes were a remarkable pale blue, this Germanic mercenary, and he could not stand in this galley cabin without bending his head. I wondered at the change between Venice and his attitude here on ship. A matter of sole responsibility, perhaps, now there is only him and his brother?
‘I’ll agree to any defence, within reason. Consult with me first.’ I waited until the tall German nodded. ‘Do we have Carrasco?’
‘In the hold, in chains, until you want him.’
Conscience might have pricked me. But I think Ramiro Carrasco quite capable of jumping into the S. Marco basin, as volatile as he seems now.
This cabin would belong to some junior officer, I guessed. For all my own protests, Rekhmire’’s influence with Menmet-Ra had gained it; and you might sleep six men in it, if four of them lay head-to-toe on the floor, leaving the wooden box-beds for two others.
The Egyptian swung himself over to the far bed and sat down, wedging the crutch in a niche between bed and deck.
I do not know what to say to you. Except that, without me, you would not be injured.
Cherry-flower might be over-ripe and dropping from saplings hardy enough to root in the Adriatic ports we visited, and the day warm enough to go without a cloak at midday, but spring is still a dangerous season for travel.
I saw little enough of the ports myself, and little enough of the Pharaoh-Queen’s trireme. One instance of being shown the higher stern cabins above me, where the captain bunked, and the helmsman followed the track of the lodestone in its binnacle, was interrupted by a frantic summons to feed Onorata, since she had apparently decided to take the pottery bottle from no hand but mine.
I likewise had little enough time to admire the breath-taking regularity of the sweeps, the oarsman not standing at their benches as the Venetians do, but sitting by threes, and drawing the long oars when the lateen sails were not sufficient, or we had spent too many hours tacking. There were arbalests set at weapons ports between every bench. And at the prow, where a Venetian war-galley would have the iron beak that served as a ram, I saw a sparkle of sun on bronze.
Herr Gutenberg came back with tar marking every item of clothing he owned, raving about a siphon and dragon’s-head spout that would shoot Greek Fire at any enemy of Alexandria. I fell asleep upright on my bunk listening to him.
‘Three month colic,’ Attila muttered, when he woke bleary-eyed b
efore his shift guarding the cabin door was due, and looked with some dislike at my child.
I sat with her face-down over my lap, rubbing at her back, in the hope that her wide-mouthed screaming might stem from a frustrated desire to fart.
I was appalled. ‘It lasts three months?’
‘It usually ends when they’re three months old.’ He dug a dirty fist into his eye as if he would grind it out of the socket, and yawned. ‘Usually.’
That there was another part of the ship, I didn’t realise until I wondered just where Rekhmire’ had stowed Ramiro Carrasco.
Brief inquiry gained me the knowledge that, below the rower’s benches and the line of cargo between them (on which the officers walked up and down to supervise), there was another hold. This took cargo or pilgrims, a man from Dalmatia on his way south informed me, and showed me down the steps to the galley’s dark interior. They likewise had no light except what came in the hatches–but this hold ran the length of the ship from stem to stern, running off into darkness either side of me; pilgrims and other passengers sleeping with their heads to the hull and their feet to the middle, where their luggage lay as a central barrier.
White sand ballast filled the ship to the level of this deck, as the Dalmatian showed me when he took up a plank and unearthed his bottle of wine and his eggs, which he had stored there to keep cool.
The stench of the bilges, combined with the idea of food, sent me rapidly up to daylight before I had a chance to look for Carrasco.
If not for Honorius, I would be travelling there. I doubt Onorata would survive it.
In the cabin, Onorata was screaming again.
I put her into the sling and took her up on deck.
The buckram and linen sling encompassed Onorata, supporting her body and head, although I kept my arm under her until I should grow used to it. I brought my cloak around her, to shield her from the ripe brisk wind blowing from the pine headlands of the coast. Her tiny screwed-up features showed dwarfed in her fur-lined hood. I wriggled my finger in to touch her neck, and judged her neither too warm nor too cold.
