Ilario, the Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  gleamed dully in the sunlight. ‘Like I said, I’m the next-to-eldest in my

  family. I used to have to look after the young ones a lot, before the priest

  took me off to teach me my letters.’

  Anger stung me. I have not paid enough attention to this before – or, I

  have, but the necessity of having more than one set of hands to look after

  Onorata made me wilfully ignore it. ‘How long do you think I’m going to

  have an assassin near my baby?’

  Ramiro Carrasco de Luis blushed like the schoolboy he would have

  been when his local priest singled him out as worth teaching his letters.

  ‘You can kill me. Torture me.’ He looked down at his dirty bare feet.

  ‘Without needing to think whether anyone will ask why. They won’t.

  Under these circumstances, do you think I’d take a step out of line?’

  I thought him a long way from the sharply-dressed secretary who’d

  waited on Aldra Federico and Sunilda. The sun had bleached his

  doublet, and the foot-less Frankish hose. He went bare-headed as slaves

  do, his hair growing out short and shaggy. The labour the captain had

  also co-opted him into on the Sekhmet had hardened his muscles, as well

  as his palms and the soles of his feet.

  I waited until he looked up, rubbing my thumb in small circles on

  Onorata’s chest since she seemed to like the rhythm. ‘I’ve known slaves

  who decided they had nothing to lose. Who felt it didn’t matter if they

  were tortured to death, so long as they had that one strike back at the master they hated. You might wait your moment, and drop my baby

  over the side of the ship. Or just pinch her nostrils together. After all, it

  isn’t a season yet since you tried to kill me.’

  Shame made me hot even as I spoke.

  This is gratuitous cruelty. Since I am ashamed of having not been sufficient for my child. Ashamed of trusting Carrasco out of sheer

  convenience.

  Onorata stirred, whimpered at tension she must feel through my arms

  and chest. She reached out with one wavering starfish-hand.

  With the automatic reaction that meant this must have happened a

  hundred times before, Ramiro Carrasco absently reached down and put

  his forefinger close to the baby now cradled in another’s arms.

  Onorata’s hand closed around his finger, lifted her head a little as she

  pulled it to her mouth, and lay back mumbling his nail as she subsided

  into dreamless squirming.

  ‘She’s advanced,’ Ramiro murmured absently, ‘for three months. She

  holds her head up well—’

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  He glanced up.

  Tethered by the infant’s grip, wide-eyed, the Iberian assassin gave me

  a look of slave’s terror.

  ‘I didn’t mean anything . . . Mistress!’ Carrasco added rapidly. His

  gaze skidded up and down me, like a water-insect on a canal. ‘Master!’

  He grew used enough to seeing me in gowns in Venice to think of me

  as female. The eastern robe and kilt, which is male clothing in

  Alexandria, is enough like Frankish women’s gowns to confuse him

  further. His eyes widened enough to show white at top and bottom.

  I frowned, in sudden realisation. ‘Have the ship’s other slaves been

  telling you stories?’

  He nodded.

  That will go a long way to explain why he looks more ready to soil himself than Onorata does.

  ‘It’s not all lies,’ I said. ‘But Alexandrine slavery’s different. I’ve been

  trying to follow Rekhmire’’s model. It was the one I preferred to live

  under when he bought me.’

  Ramiro Carrasco de Luis looked as thoroughly miserable as I have

  ever seen a man.

  ‘You’re right.’ He managed to achieve looking me directly in the eye.

  ‘Nothing honest can pass between a slave and a master. Anything I say,

  you’ll think I’m ingratiating myself through fear of punishment. I

  wouldn’t harm a child—’

  Anger momentarily broke through, to be succeeded by despair.

  ‘—but you’ll think I say that for the same reason.’

  I knew the secretary-assassin had not had particularly comfortable

  treatment in Venice; Honorius’s men, who would have treated a slave

  with some decency, set out to make the life of the man who had

  threatened their commander’s family a complete and total misery. The

  smallest things do it. A kick here, a spit in one’s dish there; an accidental

  knock into a canal, after telling tales of monster- or plague-infested

  waters. They might have done worse if Honorius had not had a quiet

  word with them. The old skills of slavehood led me to be in a place to overhear my father order that they should not maim or bugger or kill the

  man.

  But that was all he ordered.

  I studied the peeling red and callused finger that Onorata firmly

  gripped. No great wonder if the university-taught lawyer had sunk into

  himself; kept himself to menial duties with his eyes always cast down.

  But . . .

  ‘I saw you with Federico and Sunilda.’ I spoke quietly enough that I

  wouldn’t wake the baby. ‘I’d say you were an expert at ingratiating

  yourself with people.’

  The frustration and despair on Ramiro Carrasco’s face was something

  I couldn’t sketch with my arms full of Onorata, and that was a shame.

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  How have I become so vindictive? I wondered.

  Am I so jealous, if my child appears to love him better than she does

  me?

  I wanted to claw at my chest through the thin linen; claw at the small

  breasts that – ache as they might – would give not even one drop of milk.

  ‘If I trusted you, I’d be a fool,’ I said.

  ‘So you would,’ a powerful tenor voice interrupted.

  I looked up to see Rekhmire’ looming over Ramiro Carrasco. The

  Egyptian nodded to me. His gaze went to the finger that Onorata suckled

  on.

  ‘Get the rest of the baggage ready for disembarking,’ Rekhmire’

  added.

  The secretary-assassin removed his hand from Onorata with a

  gentleness that did speak of younger brothers and sisters. He instantly

  slid off through the crowd of sailors and soldiers without another word.

  If he had his shirt and tunic off, I wondered, how many weals would I

  see on his back?

  ‘You can’t trust that man.’ Rekhmire’ gazed, not at me, but at the

  massive masonry walls of Constantinople harbour gliding past. They

  dwarfed the other ships anchored here in the Golden Horn.

  His expression would have seemed impassive to someone who didn’t

  know him well.

  Oddly enough, his overt bad temper reassured me. ‘You got out of the

  bunk the wrong side this morning . . . ’

  Rekhmire’ suddenly smiled at me. ‘It’s always a little nerve racking to

  see one’s superiors again. Who knows what I’ve failed to report back in

  the last half year or so?’

  The idea of the large Egyptian being dressed down by his spymasters

  here in Constantinople . . . I smiled. ‘I’d like to hear that conversation.’

  A sudden change came in the tone of talk around us. Rekhmire’

  frowned. I glanced around. Attila and half the ship’s crew were looking

  over the port side of the boat—<
br />
  No, every man looks in that direction.

  Clasping Onorata, I elbowed my way back to Tottola’s side at the rail,

  the book-buyer in his familiar place beside me.

  Ships lined the quays at the foot of Constantinople’s massive walls.

  The larger vessels anchored further out in the harbour. More of them

  moored here than there had been ships in Venice. Every kind of ship:

  cogs, dhows, bireme galleys. Warships.

  At Venice, I missed the full-distance sight of the Sekhmet moored in St

  Mark’s basin. At Alexandria, now – I found it brought home to me that

  the Alexandrine navy consists of more than one trireme.

  ‘Six,’ I counted, and took unfair advantage of Tottola’s presence to tie

  Onorata’s sling firmly around his chest. I hauled prepared paper and

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  silverpoint out of my linen purse, to sketch everything from the high

  sterncastle of the nearest trireme to its triangular prow sail.

  Yes, it came from the same dockyard as the Sekhmet. But to see the ship all at once, whole . . .

  Six – no, seven – of the narrow vessels rocked on the gentle swell in the

  harbour. Twenty-three paces from prow to stern, if they matched ours:

  better than a hundred and twenty feet. And a mere seventeen or eighteen

  feet wide. Narrow, knife-hulled vessels, with bronze nozzles pointing out

  of the dragon’s mouths at their prows. Oars spidering rhythmically into

  the sea . . .

  Hand and eye moving between ships and paper, it took me a minute to

  notice that the smaller sails were set. On most of the triremes, a crew of

  oarsman was in evidence.

  ‘They’re not moored—’ I caught the line of one galley’s stern as she

  turned away from us: a heartbreaking beautiful swell up from the water,

  past the cabin ports, to the central stock of the rudder.

  A few lines put in cargo cogs in the background, for the scale.

  ‘Do they patrol the harbour here?’

  Rekhmire’ did not answer. I sketched the tracery of rope and sail

  against the sky, angry that I could not – because I did not know the use

  of each – draw it properly. If I had Mainz’s freedom about the ship, I

  would know every function.

  I hatched horizontal lines for the hull’s reflection in the harbour and

  abandoned the page, turning to the next empty sheet, and the trireme

  that carried the lion-head of the Pharaoh-Queen on its mainsail. ‘That’s

  one big ship . . . ’

  At my ear, Rekhmire’’s voice sounded oddly.

  ‘No – no, it’s really not . . . ’

  I lifted my head from the page, and saw what he must be looking at.

  ‘That’s an interesting trick of perspective.’

  Close at hand, a hull with a rack of masts rose up against the

  background of Constantinople’s walls as if it were a mountainside. A

  ship whose designation I didn’t know – not a galley, not a cargo-ship –

  but which some trick of distance and light made ten times the size of

  every other ship here.

  Unimaginably huge . . .

  I watched as one of the Alexandrine navy triremes rowed to pass far

  behind the evidently foreign craft.

  Attila swore. ‘ Christ Emperor! ’

  I leaned out, ship’s rail hard against my belly, healed wound forgotten.

  I stared into the light blazing up from the water.

  Distantly I could hear the trireme’s drum beating the pace. The oars

  lifted, dipped, flashed drops of sea water—

  And the trireme did not slide out of sight behind the close-at-hand

  ship.

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  It glided between us and it.

  Not something that is small, close at hand, seeming large. Something

  large, far off, that is vast.

  ‘Not a trick.’ Rekhmire’ sounded stifled. His face showed blank shock.

  As the ranked oars sent the trireme curving towards the stern of the

  foreign ship, I stared at the top of the trireme’s mainmast.

  The very top of the mast did not reach as high as the foreign ship’s

  stern deck.

  I judged a man standing in the crow’s-nest of the trireme would still

  find himself the height of a house below the foreign ship’s taffrail.

  ‘I – wait!’ I gripped Onorata almost too hard, finding myself with both

  arms wrapped protectively about her sling. ‘I remember—’

  Memory came back with instant clarity. Cannon-metal grey skies.

  Storm-lightning and rain shining all but purple on the heaving Adriatic

  swell. And seen from the deck of the Iskander . . .

  ‘I’ve seen this before!’

  Beating up against storm after storm in the Adriatic. And the sailors

  telling hushed rumours of . . .

  ‘Ghost ships.’ I breathed out. ‘That’s . . . ’

  ‘Not a ghost,’ Rekhmire’ completed, his hand coming down warm on

  my shoulder.

  ‘But it is a ship.’

  My eyes no longer lied to me. The ghost ship was moored far out from

  the quays, almost in the centre of the harbour. Each of the Alexandrine

  navy galleys patrolled around it: around the great walls of wood that rose

  from the water. A blue-glass shadow echoed it, as deep again.

  Now I saw it again as it was – and how I had seen it at sea. That vast

  assembly of bare wood, ranked stark as a winter forest against the sky,

  would hold lateen sails. Sails piled higher and higher, one row on top of

  another, each bellied out in a tight curve against the wind. I had seen

  rank upon rank of them, rising up against the storm.

  In this clear morning light of Constantinople’s harbour, each spar

  showed the irregular edges that meant sails bundled and furled.

  Below the masts was a great broad hull, with a flat prow. A hull that

  my eyes told me stood ten times longer, and five times higher, than any

  other ship in the harbour. The deck swarmed with men so tiny at this

  distance that I must believe the size of their ship.

  As we inched past the ghost ship, I saw painted on the prow, in green

  and gold and red paint, a great spiked serpentine beast. Eyes were flat

  black-on-white discs, staring out across the Alexandrine waters and at us.

  With shaking fingers, I made notes too rough to be of use. But copying

  the drawing of the serpent told me one thing.

  Not in Iberia. Not in Carthage. Nor Rome. Nor Venice.

  ‘Not the Turks, either,’ I found myself murmuring aloud, thinking of

  the patterns woven into Baris¸’s tunic. ‘I’ve seen much while searching

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  out the New Art. That – that is nothing like any style of painting I’ve ever

  seen.’

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  9

  Identical shock showed on each face. Honorius’s two men-at-arms, the

  ship’s sailors, Asru, Carrasco, Johannes Gutenberg. Rekhmire’.

  Attila snorted out a protest. ‘They don’t build ships that big!’

  Rekhmire’ frowned and muttered words which I finally distinguished

  as a list of shipyards. ‘Cyprus, Sidon, Tyre, Venice, Carthage, La

  Rochelle . . . ’

  He glanced up at the trireme’s captain, on the sterncastle. I could see

  the man shaking his head.

  ‘No. None of them.’ Rekhmire’ narrowed his eyes against the sun

  glittering off the water.
‘Menmet-Ra said nothing of this. It must have

  arrived recently, therefore. Within the last few weeks.’

  ‘Arrived here? You’re likely right—’ Onorata whined and mumbled. I

  stroked her cheek, hypnotised by the sight of the immense ship. ‘—but I

  think it’s been in the Middle Sea longer than that.’

  My drawing had gone, destroyed by weather, but I could recognise

  what I had taken for delirium and trompe l’oeil, in the Adriatic sea.

  Rekhmire’ tilted his head back. At this distance it was possible to pick

  out small figures of men on that impossibly high rail. Not possible to see

  any detail. He mused aloud, ‘It will be – interesting – to know how it

  came to be here.’

  ‘And if anybody can find out, you can!’

  He gave me the same abrupt and undignified grin that he had

  sometimes gifted me with in Carthage.

  It stayed quiet enough that I could hear ropes creaking overhead, and

  the sweeps groaning as the oars brought us steadily on towards our

  mooring place. The captain bellowed something obscene as our wake

  wavered, the rowers’ attention being all on the huge ship. I realised we

  were listing, every man who could lining the rail on this side of the ship.

  I shaded my eyes with my free hand. ‘How many men would it take to

  crew something that size?’

  ‘It’s . . . remarkable.’ Lines creased Rekhmire’’s forehead; I could see

  them where his hand lifted his cloth veil as he tried to cut out the ambient

  light from sky and flashing wavelets. He looked back at me. ‘But, if I may

  say so – not our first concern. We have matters to take up with the

  Pharaoh-Queen. Although it might be useful, perhaps, to mention to her

  that you’ve seen this vessel months ago.’

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  Our ship drove on steadily towards the mountainous masonry of

  Constantinople. I realised I had the jumping frogs in my belly again.

  The ghost ship. Yes. But . . .

  Sooner or later, the Pharaoh-Queen will call me in to bear witness to

  what I saw in Rome.

  When this city had been built by the Romans and Carthaginians, it

  was called Byzantium. The Franks called it ‘Constantinople’ after one of

  their emperors, and added monumental grandeur to the place. But it was

  the last of dynastic Egypt that had taken the city and changed it to New

  Alexandria, long centuries in the past, after the Turks overran the