by Mary Gentle
I might have protested at that, but my bodyguard was far too busy agreeing with the Egyptian.
‘When you two have finished bickering like an old married couple,’ I remarked, ‘you’ll be disappointed to know I plan to ask if I may draw things on the strangers’ ship. And where I can safely draw. Nothing like being taken for a spy to make life interesting. Right, Rekhmire’?’
Under his ruddy skin, I could swear he went a darker red. ‘I knew I should regret telling you that!’
‘As if you had to tell me!’
I broke off, since Tottola was in the process of making a remark entirely similar in meaning, but more restrained by military discipline.
I was still snickering intermittently, and holding Onorata while Carrasco fed her, when two or three of the Pharaoh-Queen’s eunuch bureaucrats were shown into the room by Attila.
If I heard anything of the hours of intense briefing, it fell back out of my head instantly. I was too busy reckoning up every item I could put in a scribe’s leather satchel, that I could carry over my shoulder. All tools for drawing, since I doubted any man would let me heat the bronze pallet-box for encaustic wax painting. The leather snapsack to protect paper and papyrus from splashes as we were rowed out into the harbour. Silverpoint stylus, reed pen, ink, chalk, charcoal-sticks, and perhaps it would be worth taking a wax tablet: stylus-lines can be incised into the soft surface as well as the more normal letters and words…
‘Ready?’ Rekhmire’ inquired. ‘I tell you now: if you choose not to risk yourself because of the child, Ty-ameny will understand that.’
Much as I hate being any man’s to beat or fondle, the life of a slave is at least easier in that one is ordered, not asked to decide.
I glanced around the great high-ceilinged rooms, beyond whose windows the white furnace of afternoon was cooling to early evening. ‘I’m ready.’
The noise of the city rose up about us as Ty-ameny’s soldiers escorted us down towards the quay. The sound was different to Venice, although I saw the trade was no less intense. Different and familiar, I felt. More like the Turkish cities along the Old Egyptian coast, and Malta, and Taraco, and Carthage.
One of the war-galleys sent in a boat. I sat upright, cooled by the occasional spray. The oarsmen rowed us through the encircling ring of triremes. I watched the touch of the sweeps, that kept each oared vessel with its Greek Fire siphon pointed at the massive foreign ship.
Hunched in the rocking stern, I practised a quick charcoal sketch of the serpent-decorated ship, to shake the stiffness out of my hand.
In a few minutes we, also, will be at the centre of that circle of potential Greek Fire.
I have barely been in Constantinople four hours, I thought, as my sandal touched the deck of the vast foreign ship.
My body was still adjusted to the motion of the sea under my feet. Every step up to the palace and down to the harbour again had felt as if I were slamming the soles of my feet into granite. The consciousness of the shift and dip of a moored ship would feel reassuring to me.
But there was no sensation of the sea on this colossus. I might have been standing on a wooden fortress in the harbour.
Two other eunuch bureaucrats accompanied Rekhmire’; one in my former job as clerk. They stood by his shoulders now as he spoke for a long time to the guards who surrounded us. I glanced briefly over the monolith’s side at the plank and rope ladder, bobbing down an incredible distance to the ferry boat, and gave up that route of escape.
The ship’s crew crowded close.
Freaks surrounded me.
No. Men.
But flat-faced men; men almost with the faces of village idiots. I have been, from time to time in Taraco, put in company with those born witless, or with no voices; only the ability to lumber about, grinning and groaning. Some of them can be remarkably gentle, given kind treatment.
The ones surrounding me now were barefoot, wearing high-collared belted robes. They held long thin-bladed spears, and carried short swords.
A ship of the mad, the witless. I recognised those odd, folded eyelids; the emotionless features. Shuddering and cold despite the evening’s heat, I wanted desperately to tell Rekhmire’ what I saw. But no, it can’t be; madmen couldn’t sail a ship!
Rekhmire’ stood very upright, his back to me, speaking in a normal tone; trying as many languages as he could think of.
I knew what he must be saying: Hello, may we come aboard, who is your captain?
Did Ty-ameny’s eunuchs get us this permission by the equivalent of point-and-mime!
Rekhmire’ spoke again, with considerably more confidence.
I recognised the language, if not the words. Occasionally, I’d heard it in Venice, from traders come in not by sea, but over the long land routes from the lapis mines in Afghanistan and the east. A dialect something like that spoken by the Turks and Persians. I understood one word in five, if that.
The larger of the black-eyed men broke into a broad grin, looked up at Rekhmire’–just looked up: he was almost of a height with the book-buyer–and laughed out loud.
‘Gaxing jìandào nî!’ he exclaimed, in a completely different-sounding language, and began to rattle off the Persian or Turkish dialect at an amazing rate. He gestured towards the stern of the ship.
The way to the captain’s quarters? I wondered.
As respectfully as if he were still my master, I murmured to Rekhmire’, ‘Will you ask permission if I can draw as I go? Those spears look sharp.’
Cautiously, the Egyptian spoke to the broad man in belted robes that, now I could look at them closely, were not Persian at all. The fabric shimmered. Silk.
Absorbed in the play of light and shade in the fabric’s folds, and what a difference it made to the colours of the blue dye, it was a minute before I became aware of Rekhmire’. He waved a broad hand, and gazed equably down at me.
‘Draw something for this gentleman, if you please.’
I unfolded my drawing book, showed the stub of red chalk on an outstretched hand, and then–as well as I could with fingers that were shaking from the climb–managed line and tone that encompassed the shape of the ship’s flat prow.
The foreign man scowled.
Or I thought he did; I realised I could read none of his thoughts for certain from his expression.
The man smeared his forefinger across one sheet of paper, smearing the chalk, and lifted it to his finger to taste.
His head snapped around; he rattled off something very quick, very emphatic.
Rekhmire’ bowed, in the Turkish fashion, and replied. As well as that unknown language, I recognised some of the versions of Carthaginian Latin from the western coast of Africa. Evidently everything was having to be said two or three times, three or four different ways.
‘He wants you to show his captain, I believe.’ Rekhmire’ shifted a gaze that took in all the Golden Horn, and the great fortress city–in which, now I thought about it, he must have been born or grown up. And now to find this huge, dangerous vessel and its unknown crew here, right here in the harbour…
Rekhmire’ inclined his head to the stout man in silk robes, gestured his eunuch clerks to precede him, tucked his crutch neatly under his arm, and took hold of my sleeve with his other hand.
I whispered, ‘They look like—’
‘Yes, but they speak like men. Like you or I.’
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 fl
esh 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 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 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.’
11
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 murmured, 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’–shìde or hâo de–and an all-purp
ose apology, duìbùqî, ‘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.
There was also húndàn, 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.
