The Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  ‘And you,’ Rekhmire’ put in smoothly, ‘were far too curious back when I was made eunuch, never mind now, Ty-ameny of the Five Great Names.’

  His face was monumentally solemn.

  The Pharaoh-Queen gazed up at him where he sat, pursed her lips in a silent whistle, and gave him a surprisingly gamin grin. ‘I’m in trouble if I’m “of the Five Great Names”…’

  ‘Ilario didn’t come here to be put in a specimen cabinet in your secret museum!’ Rekhmire’ spoke mildly, but anyone who knew him could see he was amused now. ‘Kek and Keket!, but I wonder what Pamiu wrote in his report from Rome. Great Queen of the Five Names, this is a painter, Ilario, whose account of the gift of King-Caliph Ammianus of Carthage you should hear. What any of us have under our robes is nothing to do with the matter.’

  The black gaze of the small woman switched back to me.

  ‘No prodding,’ she said meekly.

  I thought Rekhmire’, if he hadn’t the control of a lifetime, would have been quaking; I could feel his arm quiver where it rested against mine.

  I managed to say, ‘Thank you, Queen Ty-ameny.’

  She grinned, and signalled for slaves to pour more wine. Two men and two women came in. I noted that they took a reasonable pride in serving deftly, and didn’t seem to be always on the watch against being hit.

  ‘You’re already in possession of delicate information.’ Ty-ameny smoothed her tunic over her knees, and directed a keen black stare at me. ‘I suppose the Carthaginians ordered their gift painted at Rome so that rumours would spread out among the Franks. I understand that Menmet-Ra allowed the Italian’s apprentice–you–to come in and work since things were progressing so slowly?’

  ‘I wasn’t told why.’ The memory of hours spent carefully laying on coat after coat of colour and tint brought me back Masaccio’s face, laughing as he told me stories while he painted with intent genius.

  ‘According to Menmet-Ra, your late master took so long, and kept breaking off to do so much other work, that Menmet-Ra feared he would run over the deadline Carthage had ordered. It would never do to insult the King-Caliph unintentionally…’ The Pharaoh-Queen’s eyes narrowed.

  I couldn’t think of Carthage.

  The warm wind blew in scents of the Alexandrine harbour and the palace gardens, and linen curtains streamed in the breeze.

  He didn’t break off to do other work, I thought. Even if they assumed so. He drew the job out so he could study the golem. He died simply because he wanted an amazing thing for himself. He didn’t want it to come here…

  The chamber was silent, I realised. I looked up from my wine cup.

  ‘I understand that you were fond of your master.’ Ty-ameny smiled sadly.

  ‘He was painting things in a way no other man could. Maybe never will.’ I felt the muscles tight between my shoulder-blades. ‘Is the golem here?’

  ‘The golem is in my throne room,’ Ty-ameny said, suddenly tight-lipped. ‘So that Carthage isn’t offended at a rejection of their gift. That thing stands there–by my throne–already has blood on its hands–and I have no idea if it waits for some signal to run riot, kill everyone around it!’

  ‘Couldn’t you drop it in the harbour?’

  She raised a brow at me, in a way that very much reminded me of Rekhmire’ himself. ‘You put much work into it, I understand.’

  ‘Some of the best statue work I’ve ever done.’ I steadily regarded Ty-ameny. ‘If you can’t push it into your harbour, I can lift a sledgehammer.’

  Her mouth quirked up at one corner, in a very distinctively sardonic smile. ‘I understand why you might feel that way. It isn’t possible, because of the situation between nations, to destroy it. We study it. And, as Carthage designed, we have not the slightest idea how it works! Months it’s been here, and none of my philosophers can tell me how it moves, even. Not with all the resources of the Library. Someone in Carthage has made a breakthrough–House Barbas, my counsellors suspect. And Carthage won’t share the secret…’

  Because of Rodrigo’s purchase, I am both used to courts and great nobles, and used to being present at the discussion of policy. If Ty-ameny was treating me in the same way, it might be because she knew how long I had been a slave. Or else Menmet-Ra’s report had been specific about my silence as regards what happened in the Roman embassy.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know.’ I shrugged. ‘It won’t help you.’

  ‘I shall still be grateful.’ She inclined her head with a movement so suddenly graceful that I had no doubt that this woman had been on the throne of Alexandria since the age of four.

  She shot a glance across to Rekhmire’. ‘But you will have seen our problem? In the harbour? I thank the Gods you’re home today! Now I have a man I can trust to deal with this. No—’

  As he rose, she gestured to him to sit. Rekhmire’ only steadied his balance on his crutch, shot her a silent intense look, and made an apologetic indication of both the crutch and–now he was in the formal Egyptian linen kilt–his visibly scarred knee.

  ‘Oh, pah!’ Ty-ameny said lightly.

  I did not desire to be jealous of how bright his face grew at her words.

  Or resent that he never reacted so to any encouragement of mine.

  But then, I am neither his employer nor his sovereign.

  Ty-ameny bent almost double with her hands on her own knees for support. The scars were still inflamed, I saw; ridges of pink and purple flesh that stood up twistedly about the cap and side of his knee. Some patches of flesh seemed to have healed white and hairless.

  ‘I’ll have my physicians look at it.’ She straightened, seeming almost apologetic. ‘May I send you on work, first? You can see it’s urgent.’

  My stomach turned suddenly unaccountably cold.

  Of course, he is her agent, she can send him where she pleases—

  Suppose she sends him away, out of Alexandria?

  For some reason I had not envisaged being on my own here, in charge of a baby and Aldra Videric’s return to power.

  My court manners abruptly returning to me, I stood up and bowed, preparing to leave.

  Ty-ameny held out an arresting hand. ‘No, this concerns you–you particularly, Messer Ilario, if you would consent.’

  On my feet, it was just possible, from the window of this great fortress tower, to see down to the harbour. And to see the top masts of one ship. One ship only. No other is tall enough to be visible. I sat down again.

  ‘Cousin.’ Ty-ameny faced Rekhmire’. ‘You will go aboard and talk to these foreigners. No delegation has been successful so far, but I have every confidence in you.’

  It was not what she said, I realised, but the casual competency with which she said it. She really does trust ‘cousin’ Rekhmire’ the humble book-buyer…

  ‘I take it your injury will not prevent this?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘And if you would agree.’ She turned towards me, speaking with the utmost directness. ‘I would like you to go aboard as one of the delegation. Posing as Cousin Rekhmire’’s scribe, perhaps.’

  Rekhmire’ snorted. ‘Ilario will go! Especially if it involves getting closer to some new painting or fresco or inlay!’

  He has just informed the Pharaoh-Queen that she may offer me whatever terms she likes and still see me fight tooth-and-nail to get near the foreign ship.

  I caught Rekhmire’’s eye, and found the amusement I expected.

  Ty-ameny leaned forward, addressing me. ‘But you have a child, with you?’

  Between Menmet-Ra and Rekhmire’, no matter how discreet the latter might have been, I doubted there would be anything the Pharaoh-Queen didn’t know about my private life. Privacy had not been possible for a slave in Taraco either.

  That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  I went on the attack. ‘My daughter Onorata will be safe and guarded, Great Queen. But I have to admit, I don’t understand–I was Rekhmire’’s scribe in Carthage, and I did reasonable work. Goo
d work, even.’

  I avoided Rekhmire’’s eye, suspecting I might find even more amusement there now.

  ‘But I don’t see why you want me to be his scribe aboard this ship. Rather than one of your own people.’

  Almost absently, Ty-ameny stood and padded over to the window. She had to come much closer to the sill, short as she was, to glimpse the high masts down in the harbour. The sunlight glimmered on the straight black hair that fell in a cape over her shoulders and back. Her small hands clenched into fists at her sides.

  ‘They’ve been here three days now…My diplomats and philosophers have discovered nothing of these foreigners–not their name, not what weapons that vessel carries, nor the intention of its captain. I have every confidence that Rekhmire’ will open negotiations in a manner that I can trust.’

  She turned around, silhouetted against the bright light outside. I couldn’t see her expression when she spoke:

  ‘They will allow very few men aboard. I am told I could not risk myself in any case. But I desire to see what that ship is like–and have my Royal Mathematicians see it, also. Ilario, I understand from Menmet-Ra and from Rekhmire’ here that you follow what the Franks call the “New Art”. If you’ll agree, I wish you to go aboard the ship with Rekhmire’’s servants–and draw for me exactly what it is that you see there.’

  10

  Attila nodded a greeting, standing guard at the door of our assigned palace rooms.

  Inside the chambers, I found his brother. Tottola might not wear his breastplate in this climate, but even in the palace he wore mail. He carried his gauntlets hooked by their buckled straps over the hilt of his bastard sword, banging at his hip. His polished steel helm–very like Honorius’s sallet–sat upturned in his lap, with Onorata laying propped up in it as if it were a very odd cradle.

  She followed his moving finger with her dark blue eyes, and cooed in a serious and attentive way.

  Tottola had her naked, in the heat, and Ramiro Carrasco scurried out of our vast quarters with the jug and bowl he had evidently used to bathe her. She had been fed again, I realised, and felt a twinge at having missed it.

  Onorata kicked her bare feet. Tottola sang under his breath, and continued with verses that she was thankfully too young to understand. Half her lullabies were marching songs. Lengths of linen padded the metal of his sallet, and protected Tottola’s helmet-lining against anything unfortunate.

  It was a habit he had picked up from my father, who delighted to find his grandchild small enough to cradle in his sallet. Every man, from Sergeant Orazi down to Ensign Saverico, seemed to think it was permissible to joke with their lord about the likelihood of baby-shit next time he put the visored helmet on…And soon, now, she’ll be too big.

  I took the opportunity to unstopper my ink bottle and quickly sketch tones on the rough paper to show her with Tottola’s curving protective arm. ‘I’ll never understand soldiers…’

  Rekhmire’ offered Onorata his finger, which she batted away. He turned back to me. ‘The child will be safe enough with them while we go aboard.’

  It was not until I started drawing her that Onorata looked to me like an individual child. I had worried, in Venice and on the voyage: if you put her down among a dozen other babies, would I know mine? A mother is supposed to know her child. There is instinct–which I clearly did not have.

  But I know the slope of her upper lip, and her grave, extraordinary stare.

  There were sufficient drawings of Onorata in my sketchbooks that Queen Ty-ameny was convinced using me as her eye was sound. One could see how Onorata had grown since we left the Most Serene city of Venice.

  ‘She’d be safer with Honorius,’ I grumbled. ‘Back home.’

  Hot countries, plagues, the bowel-flux, flies, itches, irritations, rashes–if I sat down, I dare say I could come up with a list of similar discomforts in cold countries, too. Nowhere is as safe for her as I could wish. But here…

  ‘Ty-ameny hasn’t let any of them come ashore.’ I nodded towards the window, nominally in the direction of the harbour.

  ‘Her advisers were very keen on quarantine.’

  ‘So no man’s seen these strangers.’

  ‘Except to say they’re not Franks, or North Africans; they perhaps look like Turks or Persians, but then again, not like them…’ Rekhmire’ repeated rumours frustratedly. ‘They arrived three days ago: if it was a plague ship, the doctors who went aboard the first day would probably have sickened by now.’

  The way I heard the rumour from Attila, who had been gossiping in the palace kitchen and barracks, Queen Ty-ameny had only got doctors aboard the foreign ship by threatening to raise the vast iron chain and keep the monstrous vessel out of the shelter of Alexandria’s harbour.

  If that ship had to arrive here, it might have waited until we’d come and gone!

  I put a finishing smudge of shadow onto the drawing of Onorata, abandoned it, and walked out onto the balcony beside Rekhmire’.

  He leaned heavily on the yellow stone balustrade, gazing down–very far down–at the glimmering blue of the harbour.

  ‘Even if it weren’t so large,’ I said, ‘that’s a style of ship I’ve never seen.’

  The Egyptian inclined his head.

  ‘And she just…expects you to go and talk to these people?’

  ‘It would be some other man, if I hadn’t returned at the right moment.’ Rekhmire’’s eyes might have been narrowed against the sunlight. ‘Ty-ameny feels she can trust me. If I fail, I shall only fail. I won’t be a part of one or other of the court conspiracies, with my own ideas of who should be sitting on the Lion-throne.’

  ‘And there was me thinking all this monumental grandeur meant a different kind of court to Taraco…’ Sometimes directness is the only way to knowledge. ‘Why does she trust you? Because you’re her cousin? Which, by the way, you never told me!’

  ‘A fourth cousin is one of the very many.’ Rekhmire’ blinked mild eyes, apparently amused to be withholding information. He sharpened his gaze, and smiled outright. ‘No, you have it right; she feels she has good reason. I had a hand in preventing one of the early assassination attempts, back when she was coming of age and taking power from the Regency Council. She knows I won’t lie to her.’

  ‘Given most courts I’ve visited, that would be invaluable.’ I suspected there was more to it, that he’d done more than ‘had a hand in preventing’ whatever had happened–probably discovered the whole thing, I reflected. But if the Queen had so much confidence in her wandering book-buyer…

  I was still holding a half-inch stub of red chalk. I held it up demonstrably. ‘Will she regard this as constituting a debt?’

  ‘For you to ask for help with the situation in Taraconensis?’

  Frustrated, I shrugged. ‘I’m thinking of asking somebody–anybody!–just how I get Videric accepted as the King Rodrigo’s chief counsellor again. Because, worry at it as I may, I have no idea!’

  The hour passed noon; the hot sun was too much for me. I turned and walked back inside, taking refuge in the stone room’s coolness and shade.

  Rekhmire’ followed me in, sandals soundless on the floor.

  A fan made of fine woven fibres, and hanging from a frame, moved two and fro in a leisurely stirring of the air. I opened my mouth to castigate the German men-at-arms for letting in a palace slave–and saw, in time, that Ramiro Carrasco sat bemusedly pulling on the fan’s cord.

  Rekhmire’ went to the door, exchanging words with a servant there, and came back after a short time with a clear drink made of herbs, and with hacked-small chunks of ice floating in the jug. I realised myself thirsty in the extreme–which argued that we all must be, and I requested he find more, especially for the men wearing mail-shirts.

  By the time Rekhmire’ returned, I had experimented with stroking Onorata’s palms and the soles of her feet with quick strokes of melting lump of ice. Feeling the skin of her belly, she no longer tended to the overheated.

  ‘It couldn’t hur
t to have the Pharaoh-Queen in our debt,’ I suggested.

  The Egyptian smiled, levering himself across the floor and into the sunken area. He thumped down, took the baby from Tottola’s hands as the German soldier proffered her, and put her into the crook of his elbow. Tottola made thankfully for the iced drink.

  ‘She sends further word,’ Rekhmire’ added.

  My traitorous child ignored me, even as I sat down next to the Egyptian. She waved her hands at him. He broke off to answer her in some nonsense-tongue.

  ‘What did the Queen say?’

  ‘How carefully we need to tread. They apparently don’t desire too many men on board at one time.’

  Tottola lowered the jug and wiped his mouth. ‘Damned if I can see why not, sir. That thing’s the size of a city! What can they be frightened of?’

  Since they had evidently been allowed to advise Honorius, both the German brothers thought they should continue that habit with me–and, by extension, the book-buyer.

  ‘The Queen will want to send as few people as possible,’ I put in, stroking Onorata’s scurfy curls. ‘In case they take hostages. I’d expect a balancing act between men with enough rank to honour the visitors, and people who wouldn’t be missed.’

  Rekhmire’ inclined his head. ‘She’s reluctant to risk her witness to the golem. But since you’re the only practitioner of the New Art here, that leaves her no choice.’

  Tottola made a noise like a horse snorting, and glared at Rekhmire’. ‘I know the Lion of Castile–if you let Ilario come to harm on that thing, sir, don’t bother coming ashore!’

  At his raised voice, the baby stopped waving her arms, poised for a moment between bubbling with amusement and screaming in fear. Rekhmire’ slid a large hand under the baby’s arse, supported her head, and thrust her instantly towards me. ‘She’s hungry.’

  It was a guess. I took her in my arms, heavy for the small size of her, and warm and faintly damp as she was.

  ‘Ramiro.’ I signalled him to leave the fan. ‘Help me feed her. She might just sleep through until I come back.’

  Rekhmire’ was in the process of giving Tottola his impermeable bureaucrat expression. ‘I refuse to take responsibility for Ilario–since Ilario doesn’t just draw trouble like a lode-stone, but goes out specifically to invite it home with him–her—’