Ilario, the Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  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 . . .

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  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.’

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  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 foreign ship.

  ‘“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 remark-

  ably like any camel’s bad temper down in Constantinople’s market-

  places.

  ‘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-

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  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.

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  ‘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.

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  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?’

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  13

  We left Rekhmire’ with a dozen of the Queen’s Royal Mathematicians,

  checking calculations and speculations regarding the ghost ship.

  A tall and unusually thin eunuch mathematician by the name of

  Ahhotep joined Ty-ameny at her signal, walking the palace’s corridors

  quickly enough beside me that his linen robe flicked against my bare

  ankles. Two slaves took lamps ahead, light shading from terracotta to

  burnt-earth colours up the carved walls.

  If I had been paying closer attention, I could have overheard what Ty-

  ameny and her black-haired adviser spoke of. Weariness and fear kept

  me concentrating on putt
ing one foot before the other and falling over

  neither.

  I wondered if Tottola had needed to call Ramiro Carrasco to feed

  Onorata, and whether she was asleep or screaming.

  Cool air touched my forehead. It was not until I saw sky above a wide

  courtyard that I realised we had left the main palace. Obelisks blotted out

  stars and moon.

  Ahhotep glanced back at me with a friendly smile. The moonlight

  caught the fine silver chain about his neck, that all the bureaucrats wore

  symbolic of their slavery. He pointed to one side and a dimly-seen

  frontage. ‘The Royal Library.’

  It might have been part of the palace or separate; I would not be able

  to see unless by daylight.

  The pressure of air at my right hand was suddenly less; I guessed at an

  empty outdoor area, perhaps a larger public square. Our footsteps came

  clicking back from a nearer wall – except for Ty-ameny, barefoot and

  noiseless.

  What caught my interest, through the ache in my muscles, was that

  Ty-ameny stopped by the vast doors of a final building, and dismissed

  her slaves, taking one of the lamps into her own hands.

  The Pharaoh-Queen of the Lion-Throne can walk around at night without guards . . .

  Either that argues a devout respect for the Queen, unlike that in other

  kingdoms, or – it belatedly occurred – her guards might merely be very

  good at keeping themselves out of sight.

  Ahhotep opened a postern gate, bowing Ty-ameny and myself

  through. Inside, the lamp’s inadequate light showed the curves of vast

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  pillars, set close together. I could not see their tops. The eunuch

  mathematician took the lamp from the Queen and led the way forward,

  out across an open space tiled in red and blue and gold.

  ‘Throne room,’ Ty-ameny murmured, as if she too were reluctant to

  disturb the silence.

  Ahhotep suddenly held up the oil-lamp.

  I found myself facing the Carthaginian golem.

  ‘ Ilario! ’

  The female voice sounded sharp, but with concern. I fought to throw

  dizziness off and move in response.

  Mosaic tiles were hard under my hands and knees.

  I sat back, falling heavily to one side. Ty-ameny thrust a cloth at me.

  The eunuch Ahhotep returned out of the darkness with a bucket, and