by Mary Gentle
I may know better after this.
I pulled up a second stool, sat down, and began sketching, with paper and board across my knee.
Sitting for me was calming him, I realised.
It’s a familiar routine.
‘Videric can threaten you again.’
‘Yes.’ The light didn’t alter on his luminous brown eyes.
‘He may have imprisoned your family as hostages by now.’
Eyes moving from his face to the paper, I knew him aware of that. I need not say Videric may also have sent in his soldiers to fire and burn the villages. A man can drive his serfs off his own estates, if he wishes. Or kill them. No one speaks for them; in law they’re property.
‘I know so little.’ Ramiro shifted, meeting my eyes. ‘And I was of the same kind as your Alexandrine–in possession of every fact and rumour.’
My chalk discovered the lines of frustration, anger, passion.
‘I could have killed you in Venice! If.’ He stopped dead.
I finished. ‘If you could have brought yourself to do it.’
He glared as if I had deeply insulted him. ‘You think I couldn’t kill you?’
‘I think you’re the first man in your family to have a choice at anything except digging dirt–and you chose the university of Barcelona and training as a lawyer, not going for a soldier, like most farmer’s sons.’
I watched the pupils of his eyes widen.
‘I think Videric saw a man who could be blackmailed, and made a bad error of judgement about what he could be blackmailed into. A man who studies the law isn’t necessarily the best choice for a casual murderer.’ I sketched the slackened flesh around his jaw. ‘Which leaves you caught with nowhere to go. Not the best situation.’
He visibly struggled, and at last managed, ‘You’re not as rash as you seem, are you?’
‘Possibly you mean “not as stupid as I look”? I don’t have to tell you–a slave studies people. When anyone can do anything to you, you learn to look.’
Ramiro Carrasco shot me a look, that I thought for the first time was not solely directed at ‘Madonna Ilaria’.
I remarked, ‘Only you would blush because I don’t think you’re a murderer.’
Having reduced him to silenced confusion, I used the charcoal to darken in the masses of his hair.
‘You will have heard—’ Because it could not be otherwise, travelling with us. ‘—that we intend Videric to return to court, in his old rank and position. If we succeed, that makes us safe.’ I caught his eye. ‘All of us.’
Abruptly his face creased. He gave me a look of sardonic scorn.
‘You think if Lord Videric’s back in power, he won’t make damn sure to clear up every loose end? That he’ll let you run around loose, knowing what you know?’
Ramiro Carrasco did not need to add, And I, with what I know?
This dread slicing coldly through me is not new. This wakes me at nights–suppose what we plan is not enough?
As calmly as I might, I said, ‘You truly don’t believe this will succeed.’
Carrasco snorted as if he were a freeman. ‘I will not be responsible for the deaths of my family!’
The war-junk slowly tacking, the shift of sunlight altered all the tone and values of his face.
He will have thought what Rekhmire’ and I have thought, because Ramiro Carrasco is not stupid. Only at the frayed end of his rope.
‘Suppose I strike the rivets out, and take your collar off, and let you run?’
His eyes widened. My fingers rummaged in the sack for a white chalk to make highlights. Only a fool doesn’t use what tool there is to hand.
‘No!’ He got the word out with difficulty. ‘The sole reason he hasn’t had me killed yet is that it’s more difficult to kill both you and I at once!’
‘Then we’ll continue to make it difficult for him…’
Carrasco sat as if stunned.
To have refused your own freedom commits you–as I once discovered–to much.
‘Two things,’ I said.
I put in the curls of his hair, tumbling over his forehead, and found my skill not great enough to reproduce the confusion in his expression.
‘First, Ramiro Carrasco, if I come out of this conversation even thinking you might kill yourself, you’ll leave this cabin in chains, and you’ll stay that way.’
Carrasco sat perfectly still, moving only with the minor movements of the ship. I smudged in the values of his stubble in the sunlight, botched it, and set the board and paper down at my feet.
‘Secondly, Onorata will need feeding soon. You do it.’
His face turned so rawly open that it was painful to watch.
He spoke barely above a whisper. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I made use of you before,’ I said, ‘on the Sekhmet. I trust you, now, not to hurt a child.’
Ramiro Carrasco stared.
I said, ‘Yes, there’s no honesty between master and slave–but I can’t free you yet; as you say, I need to have that threat over Videric. So if you have to trust me, then I have to trust you.’
He sat motionless–and all in a rush put his elbows on his knees and his hands over his face.
I would let you have that privacy. But I need to see.
I reached forward and took his wrists, pulling his hands down.
Ramiro Carrasco stared away, sounding stifled. ‘You can’t do this! If he demands of me—’
‘If I choose to have trust in you—’
Water shone in the creases of skin about his eyes. He wrenched it out word by word: ‘If it was a choice–my father–my brothers–I would choose them over your child. You must know that!’
‘Then I’ll see you won’t be put where you have that choice to make.’
He made as if he would say something, struggled, and no word came out.
Rekhmire’’s tenor voice abruptly cracked through the silence in the cabin. ‘Are you completely mad?’
The Egyptian stood in the cabin doorway.
Ramiro Carrasco sprang to his feet with the quickness of a man who has been whipped for not doing so. His hands tore out of my grip.
I stood, slowly, heart hammering in my chest. ‘You were listening?’
The Egyptian snorted. ‘And Attila, too!’
Rekhmire’’s expression was one I did not recognise. Scorn, I realised finally.
I have never seen him without his self-control—
Rekhmire’ limped into the cabin, to the window-port, gazing out as if he did not see the masts and sails. Before I could speak, he swung clumsily around on his heel.
‘What is it with you and your waifs and strays, Ilario? First Sulva. Then this…spy.’
It would have hurt less, been less surprising, had he walked up and slapped me in the face.
I raised my voice. ‘Attila!’
The German put his head around the door.
‘Take Ramiro down to the animal pens. He’ll milk the goat for the baby.’
I stayed aware of them out of peripheral vision, my gaze locked with Rekhmire’’s.
Some of Honorius’s authority evidently belonged to me by proxy; Attila did not hesitate, but stepped in, jerking his thumb expressively at Ramiro Carrasco. The slave-secretary moved as if his legs were made of wet paper, stumbling out of the cabin in front of the soldier.
I kicked the door closed behind them. ‘Rekhmire’—’
‘I apologise.’ Rekhmire’ wiped his hand over his shaven scalp. ‘I know Sulva–is not mine to discuss.’
Sitting abruptly down on the low chair behind me, I caught a brush under my sandal and heard it crack.
I no longer look at the badly executed paintings I made of Sulva Paziathe. The shape of her face is marked out by my guilt.
Rekhmire’ slid off his reed and linen headband, running the woven length of it through his fingers. He snorted. ‘Carrasco, on the other hand—’
‘We need to trust him.’
‘Trust?’ Rekhmire’
limped across the cabin and stood before me. The short stick let him walk only with a swivelling limp.
This close, he smelled of the Alexandrine spices kept in his clothes chest, and that different male sweat I had become used to in Constantinople.
‘You can’t trust a slave. You should know this.’
I glared. ‘We need him on our side, or Videric will have him back, one way or another!’
It was not necessary to add that, spending months in our company, Carrasco will have learned too much of what we plan to do.
Exasperated, Rekhmire’ snapped, ‘You know there’s no trust between slave and master!’
‘No.’ I pushed the stool back squarely onto all its legs, and found myself reaching out to the Egyptian’s large hands. ‘But sometimes it begins there.’
A dark ruddy colour showed on his neck, growing to stain him at cheek and brow.
It took me a moment to realise that I saw Rekhmire’ blushing.
‘I–that is–well—’ He opened his hands to me as if we had done it a hundred times before.
His grip felt warm and strong.
‘Some slaves,’ he muttered, remarkably apologetically.
I couldn’t help a cheerful barb in return. ‘I might rescue Ramiro Carrasco de Luis; you needn’t act as if I’m about to marry him!’
‘Just as well, I think.’ Rekhmire’ stared at our hands. ‘Marrying three times in the same year might be considered excessive.’
‘This must be why Ty-ameny values your opinion so much, book-buyer–how keenly you see into a matter!’
He snorted.
I released Rekhmire’’s hands, stooping to rescue board and tinted paper.
‘I’ll draw you, too,’ I added, ‘if you’re jealous of that.’
The Egyptian stilled for a moment. He shot me a look. ‘I’m transparent to you, evidently.’
Rekhmire’ did not smile, but somehow warmth suffused his expression.
‘I confess I would be curious to see the results of a sketch. But we should speak with Zheng He first, and settle how long he’s prepared to give us at Taraco.’
‘Long enough, I hope.’ I swept my hair back, tied it with a leather thong, and re-buckled the thin leather belt (all I currently wore of my Iberian clothing) over an Alexandrine tunic.
The ship is surely large enough to cause panic. Is large enough, certainly, that I have felt no fear of the sea while aboard–as if I were not on a ship at all, but a wooden island.
Rekhmire’’s head tilted, speculatively. ‘I estimate the crew of this ship at between four and a half and five thousand Chin-men.’
‘And there are the weapons.’
It was necessary to look up, given the inches of difference in our heights. Three parts of a year together: I read him so much more easily than I do Carrasco.
And now I see we have been thinking on parallel lines these last few days.
‘I’m concerned,’ I said.
He nodded.
I voiced it, nonetheless. ‘However long we’re here–how much of a panic there is, when we appear off the coast of Taraco–we need King Rodrigo to recall Videric. And…is this going to be enough?’
3
A sound like ripping paper tensed all the muscles of my shoulders and spine.
The rockets of Chin soared up from the launcher into the night sky.
Lights exploded.
‘Kek and Keket!’
‘Amen!’
Rekhmire’ put his hand up between his face and the luminous sky and squinted. I rubbed the after-impressions of brilliance out of my eyes; night vision entirely gone. I could make out nothing of the deck, the rigging, the creaking sails, the crawling waves so far beneath the rail.
Seven bright lights sank down towards the blackness that was the coast close to Taraco.
So near and I can see nothing of it!
I left home–for want of a better word–in August, in the sign of Leo, Now the Twins rule the night sky. Two months short of a year. And it feels at the same time no time, and an age. I might have stepped out of the palace yesterday, or in the days of the Caesars and Barcas.
Rekhmire’’s arm brushed against mine, his skin warm. ‘I can only imagine what the Royal Mathematicians would have done if the Admiral had demonstrated these at Alexandria.’
I grinned. ‘Swarmed the ship, I think. If they had to swim to it!’
Anonymous figures jostled me in the dark, the crew moving around to reload the launcher and send another shower of fire into the sky.
‘I see no explosion where they land. But there may be some part of the weapon not yet used, if they only signal. I wonder…’
The dark shapes of Attila and Tottola were at my shoulder. I could all but feel them speculating if Zheng He would sell the secrets of such weapons.
Not even to the Lion of Castile, I thought.
What I could see now of Admiral Zheng He, stroking his beard in the lightning-coloured illumination, showed a man with the expression of a civilised commander sending out a warning to barbarians.
I turned blindly in the direction of the cabins. ‘I imagine King Rodrigo knows we’re here by now.’
There had been fishing boats in view since we sighted the Balearic Islands. If their captains hadn’t raised every sail to race to the mainland and be paid for their information, I would be astounded.
King Rodrigo Sanguerra would first hold his few warships in reserve–and now this monstrous vessel cleared the horizon, he would send them up the coast or down it, but certainly out of our way.
I added, ‘We should make final plans, as much as we can.’
Rekhmire’’s hand gaining support from my shoulder, we steered a way to the war-junk’s stern. The cabin held a welcome familiarity in the golden lantern-light, that put gleams of gilding on cabinets and low tables, and soft dark shadows in corners. Scattered Egyptian cushions surrounded one of the tables, on which there were plates of food.
I helped Rekhmire’ sit; he swore under his breath–and aloud, as Ramiro Carrasco came out of the inner cabin, Onorata rocking in his arms.
I padded across to touch her warm, dozing face. ‘Did the noise wake her?’
‘For a while.’ His tone was low. ‘But she sleeps again, mistress. Master. Ah–shall I take her back to her cradle?’
I stroked Onorata’s fine hair, that had grown a wispy matt black. Her eyelids screwed shut; her small sleeping mouth opened in a yawn, and she made contented noises.
Not desiring to miss this moment of her being angelic–since I had quite enough of her other moods–I reached to take her solid small body into my arms. ‘I’ll settle her. You wait here.’
In the inner room, I put her down infinitely carefully; on her back in the cradle as Ty-ameny’s nurses had advised me. I nodded to Tottola and Attila, as Tottola settled himself on his palliasse, and Attila took up his sword to guard the outer doors.
I did not begin my life under armed guard.
And I desire to make certain that she doesn’t need to–as soon as ever I can.
Walking back into the main cabin, I encountered raised voices, and snarled, ‘Quiet!’ in an intense whisper. ‘Don’t wake her!’
The two men fell silent as I sat by the low table. Ramiro Carrasco looked at me from under his shaggy hair, and knelt down beside and behind me.
‘You will have him present?’ Rekhmire’ spoke with the utmost polite mildness.
I would sooner he shouted.
‘He was Aldra Videric’s man. We need to ask him questions.’ I reached for a plate, unsure of what was before me. Stodgy clumps of white stuff, like maggots, nevertheless tasted reasonably bland. I poked among it with my fingers, removing sharp pickles. ‘I know you don’t trust Ramiro Carrasco—’
Rekhmire’ arched a brow, all Alexandrine civility.
I wish I might slap him!
‘Very well.’ I passed a dirty plate back to Carrasco. ‘I’ll call you when I need you.’
As the door closed behind Carra
sco, Rekhmire’ took up a small translucent bowl, eating with a quick-fingered hunger that surprised me. Between bites, he said, ‘Tell me reasons why–this ship may not be enough?’
My hunger vanished.
I counted factors off on my fingers.
‘The opposition faction at Rodrigo’s court are right, in fact. Even if for the wrong reason. Videric did endanger the country. He has robbed it of stability. They see that as stemming from the scandal—’ I didn’t look up at the Egyptian. ‘—which caused Carthage to be able to slap the King’s wrist, and demand that Videric should be set aside as First Minister. I know the nobles of Taraco. Even with the threat of something the size of this war-junk, there’ll be some hot-heads who think it’s one ship, they can capture it or destroy it.’
Rekhmire’ smiled his familiar hidden amusement. It failed to amuse me.
I crossed my legs in the fashion of Carthage, and reached for the wine. ‘On the other hand…We go ashore, we explain this to Rodrigo, and I promise you the King will find every way possible to make it work! Because he will want Aldra Videric back.’
If I could have kept bitterness from my voice, I would have added, Whether or not Videric tried to kill his freak offspring.
He remains the man that Rodrigo needs to see standing beside his throne.
‘Is this—’ I gestured around at the cabin walls, and by implication the vast ship itself. ‘—enough to make men forget last year’s scandal?’
Rekhmire’ tipped his bowl towards me in acknowledgement. ‘I’ve asked the Admiral to permit no contact with the land. He’ll anchor here offshore. We go in and speak to your King. That way the ship remains an unknown threat, and more persuasive.’
‘Zheng He is determined to let no man aboard?’
Attila’s voice interrupted, from the shadows by the door. ‘Boats will come out; they’ll sell fruit, wine, whores if they can. The captain and officers can’t watch all their men all the time.’
I put my cup down. ‘Then I guarantee that within forty-eight hours, Videric and half the counts and dukes of Rodrigo’s court will know about the ship’s weapons, and anything else here on board.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Attila reassured. ‘Lord Honorius warned us you’d be in danger; we’ll see you safe.’
