by Mary Gentle
I swung around to face a gang of twenty or thirty of the foreigners, as well as the one writhing on the deck and clutching his knee.
Before I could speak, the officer Jian beat his way through the crowd with the use of a short wooden stick. Thankfully, I saw he had a clutch of paper in his other fist. I stepped forward to take the sheets from him, and, as he yelled at me, to mime what had happened.
The deck around us sounded like a mews when the falcons have been disturbed; all high screeches that set the nerves and blood on edge. I slid my hand into my satchel, putting my hand on my pen knife–a blade less than an inch long, but made of such quality metal, and taking such an edge, that it would go through any man’s jugular if I merely brushed his throat.
Jian thwacked two of the nearer sailors with his staff, kicked the man on the deck, and over his loud screaming, evidently ordered the others to drag him away. Whether to punishment or medical treatment was unclear. Jian swung on his heel, exclaimed ‘Duĩbŭqĩ! ’ as clearly as he evidently could, and scratched at his tied-back hair, plainly puzzled at how to get through to me.
With as much of what I could remember of Turkish, Carthaginian Latin, and the Venetian trade patois, I attempted to describe the assault.
Jian finally beamed, and nodded. He tried several languages, before a combination allowed him to make himself almost understood. ‘You are not a masterless slave?’
I opened my mouth to try every word for ‘freeman’ I could remember, thought of Rekhmire’ repeating we are all eunuch slaves here, and settled for pointing at the main cabin. ‘Master Rekhmire’.’
The Egyptian name puzzled him until I mimed someone taller, broader, and–with a chop of the edge of my hand, down at kilt-level–eunuch. Jian grinned.
I pointed at the steps leading up to the rear poop deck, gestured for Jian to sit, and tapped my chalk against the new paper.
I was still sitting there, drawing yet another of the surrounding crowd of sailors, when Rekhmire’ came out to find me.
The sun stood further down the sky. The tide smelled of weed. Jian cleared the audience and I stood up, brushing fruitlessly at the chalk and charcoal that marked the front of my linen robe, and handed the latest sketch off to the remaining Chin sailor. He bowed, repetitively, and ran off. He might have been holding the paper upside down–I wasn’t sure if these people could see, in any real sense, how I put things down on paper, but their desire for a souvenir from the mad foreign slave evidently overcame their lack of understanding.
‘Are we leaving?’ Buckling my leather case, and slinging it over my shoulder, I glanced hurriedly around.
Even if not allowed back on board, I have enough to keep the Pharaoh-Queen’s philosophers happy. But–there is so much more—!
‘For the moment, we leave.’ Rekhmire’ beckoned his clerks, and swung himself on his crutch with the appearance of calm, towards the side of the great ship.
Falling back on the Iberian no man would understand but us, I asked, ‘Did you find out why they’re here? Are they a threat? Did the Admiral tell you what they want here?’
The Egyptian reached out and rested his arm across my shoulders, letting me take a substantial amount of his weight. I was momentarily startled. Clearly he found this physically wearing.
But to Jian, it will hardly hurt to have us appear master and slave again. And that is how he will take this.
Rekhmire’ gave me a brief smile all friendship and relief. I concluded myself not the only one glad to be leaving. He reached for the ropes of the cradle in which, it was evident, they intended to lower us to our own vessel.
Looking over the heads of the Chin sailors, he murmured, ‘I can tell you why this ship is here in Alexandria.’
‘You can?’
I let them tie us in to the leather sling like luggage, closing my eyes against the distance from deck to sea.
Rekhmire’’s voice spoke Iberian in my darkness, as the ropes jolted and lifted.
‘The Admiral was clear enough about that. Although other things are less clear. But I think I believe him as regards this. This ship is here, in this port–because they are lost.’
12
‘Lost?’
The Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny gave Rekhmire’ a look that could have melted Venetian glass, never mind smashed it.
My drawings lay spread out over the pink marble tiles of this one of her private chambers. She had questioned me extensively about each sketch. And now, when Rekhmire’ answered her question…
‘Lost,’ she repeated flatly.
‘Yes. And seeking a route back to this empire of theirs,’ Rekhmire’ said equably. ‘Which, as far as I can make out, is called “Chin”. Thousands of leagues to the east. Past Tana—’
That name was one I recognised, having often heard the Venetians mention it: a port in the north-eastern part of the Black Sea.
‘—at the end of wherever the Silk Road goes.’
I think Ty-ameny and I stared at him with precisely the same expression.
‘As for why they’re here…They became lost during a storm; I’m uncertain where. But they can at least navigate well enough to sail towards the sunrise, and sailing east has finally brought them to Alexandria. It’s clear to them that there’s more sea beyond here.’ Rekhmire’’s nod indicated the vast window, and the eastern horizon beyond the Golden Horn. ‘They think they can sail to Chin on the Black Sea waters. They have no idea that it’s a closed sea. And that there’s nothing but land beyond the easternmost Turkish ports.’
‘And you…’
‘I have said nothing of that, as yet.’
It would be strange, I thought, to have no idea of what the Middle Sea looks like.
True, no two charts I’d ever seen in a shop had ever got the shape of the lands the same–or put them in quite the same place, come to that–but the names of ports, the number of leagues and days’ sailing between them, the knowledge of rocks and reefs and pirates…All these were, if not precisely known, still capable of making a shape in my mind’s eye.
I imagined Zheng He and his great ship creeping along from headland to headland, as the trireme had, but with no pilot. Sometimes lost out of sight of land…losing his course if a storm made his lodestone useless…
As to where they might have sailed before they got here, what seas there may be between the Middle Sea and the place where the Silk Road ends–for that, I have no shape in my mind at all.
I thought of the Admiral’s horse. Four or five curves and strokes of a brush. Like nothing I have ever seen.
Aloud, I stated, ‘They’re not lying if they say they come from very far away.’
The small Egyptian woman pulled her feet up onto the cushions on the marble ledge, tucking her legs under her. She leaned her chin on her hand. Ty-ameny of the Five Great Names might have been a robin’s egg, with her freckles spattered across her nose. Certainly her eyes had the same lively bird-like look to them.
‘They’re lost.’ She made the admission with clear reluctance.
Rekhmire’ shrugged, in a way that made it clear that the magnitude of it didn’t escape him. ‘He and the interpreters and I aren’t always in accord, but if I’m understanding Admiral Zheng He, his ship was driven through what I would guess are the Gates of the Hesperides, past Gades, some time last winter. Since then, he’s been sailing about the Middle Sea.’
Including the Adriatic. The memory of what I had thought an optical illusion was strong. I wondered if Leon would add more in De Pictura on how you can have something directly under your eye and still be unable to see what it truly is.
‘Looking for a way out.’ Ty-ameny corrected herself. ‘A way east.’
She frowned up at Rekhmire’, who prodded with the ferrule of his crutch among the spread-out papers.
‘Is it as simple as that?’
‘Possibly.’ The book-buyer glanced at the Pharaoh-Queen, a frown indenting his brows. ‘Look at what Ilario’s drawn. It’s more than possible this Zheng He’s been
at sea as long as he says he has, given the clear evidence of wear on the ship. He has trade goods from Africa in his hold. And goods from the far southern coasts of the Persians. It would take a strong sea to sink that ship. He naturally wouldn’t show me his charts, but it’s possible he’s come by sea from the land where the Silk Road ends.’
Since there was an obvious one unspoken, I appended, ‘But?’
‘But…He may be lying. Or exaggerating for threat’s sake. Or–well.’ Without asking permission, the tall Egyptian shuffled himself along the bench, settling ultimately on the cushions within an arm’s reach of the Pharaoh-Queen.
She put her tiny hand on his arm. ‘Well?’
Rekhmire’ looked down at my spread-out papers, his brow creased with more than worry. ‘Well, there is nothing here to confirm or deny it…but what the Admiral Zheng He claims is that when he was driven before the great storm, he was separated from the rest of his fleet.’
Ty-ameny did precisely what I did, I noticed a moment later: stared at the palace window overlooking the harbour, as if she could see through the city’s massive walls, and the darkening evening, into the heart and mind of the foreign man aboard the foreignship.
‘“Fleet”,’ she echoed, a little derisively.
Rekhmire’ linked his broad, large fingers, and looked down at his hands. ‘Which he claims is made up of ships the same or similar tonnage to this one we have out there. He exaggerates, of course, because that is what a man will do. But—’
Ty-ameny slapped his shoulder, as if she were no more than a younger sister to him.
‘How many?’
‘His lost fleet,’ Rekhmire’ said, ‘he claims to consist of two hundred ships.’
A silence filled the royal chambers.
Ty-amenhotep of the Five Great Names snorted, the sound remarkably like any camel’s bad temper down in Constantinople’s marketplaces.
‘Two hundred? Oh, he might at least tell a convincing lie!’
She sprang up, absently turned on her heel, and paced with that control of the space about her that I have grown used to seeing among powerful men. Seeing the same gestures in a woman—
As I also rose to my feet out of respect, I realised, Now I know how disconcerted men and women feel, when they lay eyes on me.
‘Two dozen would be bad enough!’ she grumbled. ‘And even two would pose a danger. Is it significant that this foreign admiral feels he must boast?’
One wall of this particular room was carved with bas-reliefs and cartouches in red and blue. At least some of the sculptors, I saw, had chosen to depict Old Alexandria falling to that Turk who had kept his defeated enemies in iron cages. Constantinople would never need, behind its vast walls, to be concerned with similar enemies. But more than one ship like Zheng He’s…
Rekhmire’ reached for his crutch, but sank back at her gesture. He confirmed my thoughts. ‘Not only is Zheng He lost, but lost among men not at all like him. I think he lies and exaggerates no more than any other commander.’ The book-buyer shrugged. ‘But then, we have hardly been allowed to see everything on the ship.’
I had been permitted to bring only one thing away, apart from my drawings for Ty-ameny–a tiny cup, no larger than a child’s hand, in which Jian had served me a colourless and fairly insipid wine. Showing it to the Pharaoh-Queen had gathered some admiration. The ceramic was light and translucent enough that when, as now, I put my finger inside the empty cup, I could see its shadow through the side.
Ty-amenhotep raised her voice to call for more servants to light sweet-smelling oil lamps; she and Rekhmire’ spoke of court politics; and I sat regretting the terre verte pigment lost in Venice–using egg tempera on a gesso ground, I might have begun to make an attempt at capturing the glaze’s pearlescent shine, along with its transparency. Although that is a task for a master, which as yet I am not.
Masaccio, making colour value into mass and form…
The master that should see this is dead.
I wondered, then, the word in my mind, whether the Master of Mainz would also be housed with us. Or whether the Pharaoh-Queen’s ‘Royal Mathematicians’–as she named her natural philosophers–would have him all night explaining his printing-machina.
Standing wearied me, but Ty-ameny continued her pacing. I rubbed my hand across my eyes, the darkness behind my eyelids welcome.
The familiar drag and click of Rekhmire’’s crutches let me know he had risen.
I opened my eyes to see him join Ty-ameny at her window, overlooking the vast city.
‘Sidon?’ he suggested, naming a port that I thought somewhere west and south of us. ‘They might leave their ship and march home along the Silk Road.’
‘I wish they might leave their ship here!’ Ty-ameny gave her cousin her gamin grin. ‘But if I were the captain, I wouldn’t be parted from it. Besides, can you imagine sailors asked to turn soldier and march all those thousands of leagues? Never mind what they carry as cargo.’
The lamp-lit chamber was comfortable, even if it dwarfed the book-buyer and the Pharaoh-Queen with its high ceiling and vast blocks of masonry that made up the walls. I felt not only at ease, I realised, but as if it were familiar.
Because neither Ty-amenhotep nor Rekhmire’ take exception to my presence?
As Rodrigo’s King’s Freak, it never surprised me to be involved in court business in Taraco, although I steered clear of factions. That I could fall into the same pattern here, as Rekhmire’’s scribe and Queen Ty-ameny’s artist, felt similarly comfortable.
‘Great Queen,’ I suggested, into the perfumed silence, that was broken only by the noise of voices and vehicles in the city below. ‘I think the Admiral desires charts. His officer Jian was speaking of them.’
She nodded, receiving the suggestion equably. ‘Not to give too much aid at first–Rekhmire’, if I send you with maps of the coast here, and the waters to the east; let him see land-maps that show the road to Aleppo and other Turkish cities. I think it’s well this Zheng He begins to believe they’re at the other end of their trade route with us.’
‘Us barbarians.’ Rekhmire’ made the addendum gravely.
The Pharaoh-Queen gave him a look.
‘That’s what he calls us.’ Rekhmire’ smiled down at Ty-ameny. ‘The Admiral Zheng He says their empire has lasted five thousand years. Older than Carthage.’
‘Five thousand years of emperors? And two hundred giant ships?’ The Pharaoh-Queen craned to look around the carved stone frame of the window, at pale light behind the gathering clouds. ‘I suppose they have a trading colony on the moon, too!’
I risked mimicking Rekhmire’’s equable look. ‘That would explain why they don’t look like anyone else, Great Queen. Or draw or paint like anyone else.’
Ty-amenhotep of the Five Great Names glanced from me to Rekhmire’, and stalked past us, back into the room to flop down on the nearest seat. ‘Cousin, either you’ve been too much in Ilario’s company, or Ilario has been too much in yours!’
The book-buyer gave me a more relaxed smile than I had seen since we boarded the trireme in Venice.
He seated himself again on the marble bench, collecting silk pillows with his free hand and stuffing them behind his back. I joined him. He beckoned for my drawings, and ink and chalk-work, and the two of them bent over my efforts again.
Jian had taken some of the Admiral’s scrolls out for me to look at. Delicate, as if the colour had been put on with spring water, or spring light. Language didn’t allow him to explain how.
As well as sketching all aspects that I could see of their great cistern-shaped hull, I’d paced out the distances across the deck and made a quiet note of the measurements. Looking at the Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny as she scribbled furiously on a wax tablet, I thought her as capable as her Alexandrine ‘philosopher-scientists’ of working out the exact tonnage of Zheng He’s ship. And the offensive power of the ship’s cannon (cast out of recognisable bronze), and their engines that shot great long iron bolts (if I could
judge by the ammunition stores).
Among the scattered papers I saw my drawings of two-handed ceramic containers, that might have been pots for oil or wine, but–from Jian’s ardent keenness to remove me from their vicinity–I knew must be weapons as well. They looked as if they could be fused. Some parts of the hull stores had the distinctive scent of gunpowder.
Still, I thought, hauling my ankles up to sit cross-legged among the cushions beside Rekhmire’. Magnificent as it is, it’s only one ship. It can’t threaten to take on the navy here and bombard Constantinople’s walls down…
Unless the rest of the hypothetical fleet turn up.
And then even Carthage and Venice will be pushed to hold on to sea-power in the Middle Sea.
By the window, a patch of moonlight progressed across the shining stone floor.
I watched it, in silence unbroken except by the rustling of paper. My hands felt oddly empty, since they held neither a stylus nor Onorata.
There has been little enough time, I thought, rubbing at the gravel that seemed to be collecting in my eyes. Little enough time since we landed, and all of it taken up by the Admiral of the Ocean Seas, but—
Sooner or later I must ask her.
Must ask the Pharaoh-Queen of New Alexandria, How do I make the Aldra Pirro Videric into the First Minister of Taraconensis again?
‘—Ilario?’
The Pharaoh-Queen was turning back from dismissing a beardless fat man who I took to be a eunuch servant. By the sound of her voice, it was not the first time she had asked.
I straightened myself up beside Rekhmire’, piqued that he had not used the elbow I was leaning against to nudge me into greater attention. ‘Yes, Great Queen?’
‘The hour’s late.’ Her eyes shone darkly in the many lamps’ light. ‘And it’s a poor reward for you helping me with the foreigners’ ship. But I need, urgently, to speak to you. Will you tell me everything that you experienced with Carthage’s stone golem?’
13
We left Rekhmire’ with a dozen of the Queen’s Royal Mathematicians, checking calculations and speculations regarding the ghost ship.
