by Mary Gentle
Onorata lay on her back asleep, but only because she had screamed herself into exhaustion.
Somewhat sourly, Rekhmire’ muttered, ‘Zheng He won’t be talking to King-Caliph Ammianus for some time yet–since the man’s likely stone-deaf!’
Honorius stuck his head out of the small port, gazing down the hull–so much larger than any other vessel in Carthage’s port. His voice came back muffled. ‘If Zheng He was a normal man, he’d be dead drunk!’
I took my father’s point. More of the Admiral’s junior captains had flocked aboard the war-junk. Two in particular appeared his friends: they called him ‘Ma’ instead of ‘Zheng He’, and I saw much male back-thumping and extremely rapid speech going on, before the general noise forced me to retire below.
Rekhmire’ rubbed at his knee-joint. ‘Apparently their religion doesn’t allow drunkenness.’
He glanced away as I caught his eye.
The Egyptian is nervous.
Perhaps Ty-ameny’s briefing for what he must say to the King-Caliph Ammianus?
Honorius, pulling on his furred demi-gown, spoke a little apologetically. ‘I’d take you with me to the King-Caliph’s audience if I could, Ilario.’
Does he read my mind?
I couldn’t help but smile.
‘As far as I can tell,’ I said, stroking at the soft curls sweat-stuck to Onorata’s ear, ‘there’s you, Admiral Black-Eyes, and the book-buyer here, all going up the Bursa-hill to tell the King-Caliph the same thing. “Look at those ships down in the harbour–now keep your nose clean!”’
Honorius chuckled.
‘I’d like to see your performance,’ I said. ‘But King Rodrigo would skin me if I don’t keep my face away from your company in public.’
My father held his arms out while Saverico buttoned the pleated demi-gown and arranged his flower-and-serpent-stamped leather belt. Chin awkwardly up as his collar was straightened, Honorius spoke loud enough to be heard over the drums.
‘If you go into Carthage, take my men. If you don’t need to go, stay on board.’
The din of drums and conches did not die down. I thought it would not until Zheng He and his officers and captains had made their way up to the King-Caliph’s palace. And perhaps not even then.
I caught Rekhmire’ watching me.
I said, ‘I intend to send Ramiro Carrasco out, to find a rooming-house.’
I saw illumination dawn on Honorius’s face that was not from the Chin fireworks.
‘Even if it’s only the once,’ I finished, ‘I want Onorata to meet her father.’
Honorius and Rekhmire’ accompanied the Admiral up to the Bursa-hill numerous times over the next few days.
I claimed I would wait until they had space in their political business to accompany me to Marcomir’s house.
Truthfully, my guts crawled with chills.
Honorius spent thirty years wanting a child he couldn’t have. He would have loved anything, I sometimes think. And if he had been shocked by the idea of having an hermaphrodite offspring, he did all his thinking about that between Taraco and Carthage, before he ever met me.
Marcomir, though…
Marcomir never struck me as wanting children.
Brief as our acquaintance was.
‘Ready?’ Rekhmire’ questioned.
He wore a simple white tunic, for much the same reason that Honorius–with sighs of relief–was allowing Saverico to buckle him into a blue velvet-fronted brigandine. A book-buyer and a soldier would pass unnoticed in Carthage’s streets.
Especially with the city full of Chin strangers, to be studied, and stolen from, and seduced.
I checked, for the fourth or fifth time, that nothing essential was being left in the ship’s cabin. That Onorata’s clothing was clean, and her sling buckled firmly over my shoulders.
To Honorius, but with an eye on Rekhmire’, I said, ‘We should bring Ramiro Carrasco.’
Carrasco’s expression was unexpectedly optimistic. Before either man could rebuke him, he said, ‘Because I’m a lawyer?’
It had not occurred to me.
But he’s right: a man trained in the university might serve us well.
‘Yes. But also,’ I added, ‘you’re a slave.’
Ramiro Carrasco rubbed his hand through his hair, dishevelling it thoroughly. ‘Why do you need a slave, madonna? Master?’
I surveyed Onorata’s belongings again by eye. Honorius’s experiences with a mercenary baggage train are nothing once one needs to take a young baby out.
‘Apart from general baggage-carrying? I don’t want Marcomir to think I’m asking for money. If I own a slave, I’m not poor.’ I shot a wry look at Honorius. ‘Even if the money’s yours.’
‘We’re family, brat!’
It cheered me.
‘And,’ I said, ‘Marcomir might also think this is for revenge. Ramiro, you need not tell him what you did. But if necessary, you can tell him I forgave you a crime.’
And Marcomir did nothing to me that I didn’t desire.
Ramiro Carrasco stared at the cabin floor. ‘Madonna, if you wish, I’ll tell him I tried to kill you.’
Any man who didn’t know him would not have seen what the honesty cost.
‘You can be the judge of whether he needs to hear that.’
Carrasco looked down at his hands. The cabin was dimly lit by oil-lamps, but I thought his skin showed a flush. He stuttered, seeming acutely conscious of the presence of Rekhmire’ and Honorius. ‘I don’t know why you would forgive me!’
‘Because since we left Venice, you’ve been completely trustworthy.’
He looked startled. ‘I—That could be a ruse!’
‘There are a hundred ways a slave can get back at a master. I know. Believe me. You didn’t try any of them.’
Carrasco ducked his head, almost flinching.
If a man ever did good by stealth, or tried to atone without any other man actually noticing…that would be Ramiro Carrasco de Luis.
Atonement brought the cathedral and Father Felix to mind. I thought suddenly, I wish I had confessed myself sorry over Sulva Paziathe!
I did worse to Sulva, and I will never find her to atone for it–when people like the Paziathe disappear, they do it effectively, because lives depend on it.
If I can’t pay a debt where it belongs, I must pay it where I may.
Carrasco picked up the sack with Onorata’s clothes, toys, and food. As the Alexandrine and my father put on their cloaks, he ventured, ‘Onorata’s going to be hungry when she wakes up. She wouldn’t eat, with all the noise.’
I rested my fingers briefly against her brow, not merely to see if she was feverish, but because her warm skin is a touch like no other. ‘I’ll feed her when we get there; I doubt they’ll mind.’
The baby opened pale blue eyes, coughed, cooed, and loudly choked out, ‘Mee-roh!’
Honorius stared at my baby.
Rekhmire’ opened his mouth, as if he would say something, and firmly shut it again.
Carrasco and I stared at each other.
‘Did she say something? No,’ I corrected myself, ‘it’s too early, surely. Surely? What did she say?’
Carrasco brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek.
If she was cool, I saw, he was hot as fire, his skin flushed now from neck to hairline.
He muttered, ‘She’s said that once or twice before. I…think it’s what she calls me.’
‘Calls…’
Ramiro. ’Miro.
‘The first word my baby says is your name?’
He flinched.
In an unexpectedly peace-making tone, my father observed, ‘It might equally have been my name. Or the sergeant’s. Or the book-buyer’s. Or yours, Ilario.’
‘This child has too damn many fathers!’
And not a mother among them.
I sighed, shook my head, and hefted my child in her sling.
‘Let’s go and find another of them…’
A hollow moan
shuddered through the air.
Outside the immediate area of the port, Carthage’s windowless houses and steep, narrow streets resounded to it as if they were the body of a drum.
Impossibly, the sound came from a shell–although larger than any shell should be. Earlier, Jian had given me the spiral conch to hold in my hands and draw.
He all but laughed himself into an apoplexy when I attempted to blow it. All I did was go red-faced and watery-eyed, failing to get the merest squeak or fart out of the thing.
The alien sound echoed out again under the black midday sky.
The street stood deserted.
Because every man and woman in Carthage who could reach the docks crowded down there, I admitted. The novelty has not yet worn off. I could see dark lines of heads silhouetted against the naphtha illuminations of the quayside. And crowds of the King-Caliph’s subjects stood up on their flat roofs, and tried to count the number of huge sailed war-junks cruising in the vicinity of the city.
Zheng He quartered a number of ships further down the gulf, I learned from Rekhmire’ and Jian. Partly for logistical reasons, and partly because Zheng He had smiled, in a very civil manner, and set about demonstrating Alexandria’s apparent new allies to every North African city for fifty miles around.
Almost inaudibly under the conch’s racket, a brass horn blared to mark the first hour of the afternoon.
That used to mark my break for a meal, here.
I shot a look at Honorius, his face made sombre in the naphtha street-lights’ glare. Light glinted off Orazi and Berenguer’s steel sallets where they flanked him.
The narrow streets, cut into steps more often than not, gave Rekhmire’ the most trouble. He drove himself forward, cursing under his breath, and I guessed his knee-joint would be inflamed tomorrow.
‘Here.’ Ramiro Carrasco pointed.
He stopped by a heavy iron door, set deep into the granite wall of a four-storey house. The iron surface showed featureless except for one keyhole.
No way to knock. No windows opening onto the street. They would be on the inside walls, opening into a central courtyard.
‘All looks the same to me!’ Honorius grunted, squinting up at the brown and gold aurora as if the midday Penitence sky could give him directions.
No point in asking any Carthaginian, I reflected. In the current excitement, Carthaginian Visigoths weren’t interested in talking to any stranger who wasn’t a man of Chin.
Surveying the iron door, I remarked, ‘I don’t recognise it.’ I added a swift gloss: ‘Carthage was new to me!’
I have no desire to tell my father how I stumbled up these stepped narrow streets in Marcomir’s company, in a blind haze of arousal.
Since I had stout leather sandals on, I fetched the door a hefty kick.
It juddered in the frame.
I raised my voice in case we were overheard. ‘We can come back if they’re out now—’
I caught the faint grate of metal against stone.
The door swung in, opening into darkness. The street’s naphtha-light was not bright enough to show me who stood there. Between that and the sunless day-sky of the Penitence above, I could barely make out that it was a man who stood there.
‘Forget your key?’ His voice cut off.
The dim figure turned into a black silhouette, as a lamp shone behind him.
Yellow light swelled and swung on the clay walls, and a silver-haired woman walked up behind the man in the doorway. She held up the lamp, her eyes squeezed into slits. I recognised the hawk-nose.
‘Donata!’
Now I could see the man. Lean, muscled, dark-haired, middle height.
He has left nothing of his face in Onorata.
Marcomir frowned. He might not remember me well, either, I realised. It was once, and a year ago.
And these Alexandrine robes might make him think me male or female, according to his assumptions.
‘Marcomir?’
He stared at me, finally grunting an assent.
I took a firmer grip on Onorata, cradled in the crook of my right arm.
‘Marcomir. This is your daughter. Her name is Onorata.’
Ramiro must have mentioned armed men to him. Marcomir showed no overt reaction to Honorius and his soldiers.
He has not changed so much, in a year. Dark hair curling only a little lower on his neck, and his off-duty tunic cut in a different fashion.
Marcomir met my eyes, and looked away. It was normal human embarrassment I saw on his face.
I said, ‘May we come in?’
He thrust his hand through his hair, looked around at each of us, and finally back at the baby in her miniature linen shift and coif.
‘Yes…’
Donata echoed him. ‘Yes, come in.’
He led us through into the inner part of the house.
Donata’s face seemed to have strain scored more deeply into her lined skin. But that might just be this present situation.
Above us, feet thundered up and down the narrow stairs. Other occupants, I speculated, listening to the echoing noise.
It’s still a rooming-house.
Lamp-light guided us through to the back, into the kitchen that overlooked a central courtyard. Donata caught my gaze as she set the lamp down on the low basalt table. It was no more than a shaped stone block. I recognised the stove, the table crowded with Roman-style pots, hanging onions; even the silver water ladle…
In the hoarse dialect that I thought was from Leptis Magna, or one of the other Carthaginian settlements, Donata broke the silence.
‘One-Eye said you got a good master out of it.’ She nodded at Ramiro Carrasco. ‘If you’ve got slaves of your own, I guess he was right.’
There are no good masters!
A window stood open, into the communal courtyard. The shutters were ajar. Scents of fish and junipers and sewage came in on the early afternoon wind. It vividly brought back to me One-Eye’s cells, Rekhmire’’s hired house, the tophet.
I sat down on one of the long benches built into the kitchen wall. Onorata woke and began squirming gently in my lap. ‘How did you know One-Eye sold me?’
‘Oh, my son spoke to him, in the tavern? Afterwards? We always wanted to know people went somewhere comfortable.’
Comfortable.
The choice was between screaming or saying nothing. I doubted I might truly explain to this mother and son what happened to their guests. I still wake in dreams, cold sweat down my spine, as Rekhmire’ turns away and does not throw his purse to One-Eye.
‘My lord! Sit down, sit down!’ Donata flurried around Honorius, ignoring his soldiers in much the same way that she ignored my slave. She put a Samian jug full of wine on the kitchen table, along with pottery cups that seemed remarkably crude after Jian’s porcelain.
I caught her eye.
She flushed, defiantly poured out wine, and drunk her cup down in one.
Marcomir ignored her, sitting down on the ledge beside me. He stared at Onorata. ‘Is this the…How did you–how did we—She’s tiny.’
Donata glanced over, hawk-swift and analytic.
‘Premature.’ She registered my surprise. ‘Seven-month baby?’
‘Yes. How do you…?’
‘I saw enough of them dead at that age.’ She shrugged. ‘Never could keep a babe in my womb long enough until Marcomir, here. And look how that turned out!’
Her humour was rough teasing, but in any case Marcomir was oblivious. He gently smoothed the curls of black hair that poked up from under Onorata’s linen coif. She turned her head and appeared to stare at him.
Rekhmire’ thumped down onto the bench, rubbing his knee. I was vaguely aware that Honorius put his hand under Donata’s elbow, steering her to sit down. He began to speak quietly to her.
Orazi stationed Berenguer at the door, he himself leaning on the windowsill. A jerk of his head summoned Carrasco.
There is a choice between security and privacy. The Armenian sergeant will give as much of th
e latter as he safely can.
Marcomir put his finger next to Onorata’s hand, and examined the nails. Hers were identical to his, but so very small.
‘Got into trouble about selling you, Ilario,’ he murmured, quietly enough that Onorata rummaged herself back into a light doze, leaning against me.
‘You did?’ I stroked her cheek. Fed and changed and allowed to sleep–but for not too long–would usually mean she woke now in a good temper.
‘Spoke to One-Eye, like she said.’
He jerked his head, indicating Donata, who stood to pour more wine for Honorius.
‘Few weeks later, my boss down at the Hall, he calls me in. He says it doesn’t look good if merchants and visitors to Carthage vanish. Not a hard slap on the wrist, but…the customs job keeps us. So I said no, of course not, wouldn’t happen again. Even if it meant things would be a bit tight.’
He does think I intend to ask him for money.
Onorata screwed up nose and eyes and yawned.
Marcomir shook his head in wonder. He grinned up at me suddenly, and sat back.
‘I said we were doing people favours! Look at you. One-Eye said your owner was a hard son of a bitch when it came to a bargain, even if he was good-looking. But I guess you got away from him?’
I deliberately refused to look in Rekhmire’’s direction. ‘My master freed me.’
Marcomir thrust a hand through his hair again. ‘What do you want from me?’
I registered Donata’s quick frown.
Donata stayed alert to her son’s reactions, even though she was deep in conversation with my father. I wondered briefly how much Onorata might take after her, in the future; this…grandmother.
As much as Rosamunda is, Donata is Onorata’s grandmother.
I pictured the queen of the Court of Ladies and Donata in the same room–or rather, failed to picture it.
‘I can’t keep a child on my wages.’ Marcomir opened a long-fingered hand in my direction. ‘But you’re dressed well enough, and so’s the babe, and you’re free, so I suppose that’s not what you want anyway. Is she truly mine?’
‘You don’t remember?’
The light from the clay lamp gave everything a golden cast, transmuting his flush from something pink by sunlight into something bruise-coloured.
