Ilario, the Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  began spilling sand over something on the floor that the lamplight did

  not clearly show.

  My throat felt raw. The taste of vomit was disgusting in my mouth.

  ‘I ought to have realised!’ Ahhotep sounded as if he were repeating

  himself. ‘Great Queen, I’m so sorry! Master Ilario, how can I apologise!’

  I dimly remember Rekhmire’ once mentioning that the Royal Library

  kept fire-buckets of sand in every room. Evidently it was a practice

  throughout the palace complex.

  I doubt he ever imagined them being used to cover up sick.

  I pushed my heels against the tiny ridges of the mosaic, edging back.

  Wiping the cloth over my mouth took away some of the taste.

  Only yards away from me, at the edge of the lamplight, stood feet too

  large for life-size – but skilfully painted in the colours of flesh.

  The stone feet of the Carthaginian golem rested immovably against

  the floor. The shadows hid its height, but I glimpsed a curve of reflected

  light on its fingers, where its hands hung by its sides.

  ‘I should have realised!’ Ahhotep moaned again.

  My own realisation was closer to I wish to hit Ahhotep.

  The golem stood, half-painted, beside the Queen’s ancient stone

  throne. Under other circumstances, the carved porphyry block would

  have been impressive in itself: a dark purple stone, the seat worn down

  into a deep dip by dynasty upon dynasty of Pharaohs. But the crystalline

  glitter in the rock could not take my eye from the painted golem.

  Like a Venetian harlequin.

  I’d forgotten we hadn’t finished the face.

  In the gold lamp-light, one blind stone eye looked at me. The other

  was painted to have the brilliance of life. Lustrous and brown and my

  stomach rose again, threateningly, as I recognised it – the evident model

  for the painted stonework was Masaccio’s eyes, where he had begun to

  give its face some touches of a self-portrait.

  I wiped the cloth hard across my lips.

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  If I’d thought anything, after Menmet-Ra’s arrival at the Alexandrine

  house, it was that Ty-ameny must have had one of her craftsmen finish

  off the painting here. I’d even imagined asking, with insouciant gallows

  humour, ‘What butcher did you get to finish this paint job?’

  Instead I throw up, like a child.

  ‘You know that it killed the master I was apprenticed to?’

  Ty-ameny moved her bird-boned shoulders in a shrug. ‘Yes. I regret

  that. You know, that if I had a choice, I’d wrap in anchor-chain and dump it in the Bosphorus!’

  Ahhotep fumbled in the sleeves of his robes, bringing out a stylus and

  wax tablets. ‘The diplomatic representatives of Carthage would notice,

  Great Queen, and we dare not seem afraid of anything they offer us.

  Master Ilario, anything you can tell us will be helpful. Don’t worry what

  Lord Menmet-Ra may have reported before. Just begin at the start, in

  your own words.’

  Climbing to my feet, I realised I recognised the gleam in the skinny

  eunuch’s eye. It is Masaccio’s.

  I thought of Rome; the chill of early autumn. If Tommaso Cassai had

  had the chance to hear about this golem, would he have cared if it had

  killed a man before?

  In all truth – no, he would not.

  And this Ahhotep, black hair cut at jaw-level and wearing formal

  Alexandrine robes, might have been the Florentine painter’s blood

  brother in that respect.

  All my muscles tensed, every tendon; every nerve on edge.

  If that thing moves, I will be out of this throne room so fast—

  I thought it not impossible it might have connected itself to me,

  somehow, in the embassy at Rome; that my presence might move it to

  act.

  Fear moved me to recklessness. I picked the lamp up from where

  Ahhotep had stood it on the dais of the throne, and held it close to the golem. This close, the light showed me every scratch on the bronze and

  brass metalwork of the joints.

  The nobles of Carthage being what they are, Ty-ameny will have been

  put in possession of the words to make it move.

  Even if she will not use them.

  ‘The paint looks absurd.’ Mimic skin and veins and hair as it might,

  you may as well put a ribbon on a boulder. ‘This is nothing more nor less

  than a weapon, no matter what shape it is.’

  Ty-ameny stepped lightly up the carved porphyry steps and sat on the

  throne, a yard from the golem. The lamp cast shadows in the sockets of

  her eyes.

  ‘If we’re very lucky,’ she observed flatly, ‘whatever madman wrought

  this in Carthage can only make a few of them. A handful. Not dozens.

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  Because if you see these on the field of battle, in numbers . . . If I see them outside this city’s walls . . . ’

  Honorius had seen my one partial rendering of the stone golem (done

  out of memory), and instantly remarked, A man armoured invulnerably at every point! And after a pause, had added, Who can’t be stopped by wounds. Only hacked to pieces.

  I repeated this aloud.

  Ahhotep looked as if he had suffered six weeks with a fever. Stress

  drew dark lines down from his nose to the corners of his mouth.

  ‘I fear it badly enough, Master Ilario.’ He put his hand on the edge of

  the purple throne, glancing at Ty-ameny. ‘As her Great Name knows, I

  fear seeing this thing come to life and kill the Queen. Tell us what you know.’

  I told him everything.

  What I thought I could not remember, his questions prodded out of

  me. The night turned on, oil in the lamp guttering, until at last I was telling my story in the dark. I couldn’t shut my eyes hard enough to

  prevent hot tears leaking out from under the lids. Masaccio. Sulva. And where is her bride-piece statue, now?

  Ty-ameny became gradually silent.

  I fretted. I am telling her nothing she does not already know.

  An urgent need for sleep weighed me down, but I felt an unexpected

  sympathy for the Pharaoh-Queen – I, at least, need not ever see the

  monstrous thing again; she must have the golem beside her throne

  whenever she gives audience.

  ‘Could it not have sunk on the ship coming from Rome?’ I finally

  blurted out.

  A new oil-lamp flared to light under Ahhotep’s hands. By it, I saw that

  Ty-ameny smiled. She shook her head. ‘Too many spies and gossips

  have seen it here.’

  The gleam of light on stone disturbed me.

  ‘It needs painting, Great Queen. Could it not be in a workshop,

  instead of standing beside the throne?’

  Ahhotep came forward, one hand fiddling with his neck-chain. ‘The

  Carthaginian envoy is expected. He will expect to see the gift where

  protocol demands it should be.’

  ‘For the same reason,’ Ty-ameny put it, with a gloomy cheerfulness

  that reminded me much of Rekhmire’, ‘we can neither set it in Roman

  concrete nor forge chains around it.’

  ‘Can’t you—’ I waved a hand, frustrated. ‘Restrain it secretly, in some

  way?’

  ‘If there is such a way, none of my Royal Mathematicians have advised

  me of it.’

  Silence fell. It had been quiet some time when I heard Ahhotep’s

 
sandals on the mosaic, diminishing away from us. Before I could

  162

  formulate a question, I heard the creak of a door opening. A larger

  postern door, by the faint light that streamed in from it, wet and chill with dew. The sun has risen.

  ‘From what you tell me,’ Ty-ameny observed quietly, ‘ any man may

  have the word that orders the stone man to act. I need not go to the

  trouble of banning all Carthaginians from the court, because they might

  send anyone. One of their own, or not.’

  Raw-throated from speech, now, I nodded my agreement.

  ‘I need to stay alive.’ The woman pushed herself up, weight on her

  wrists, and stepped stiffly down from the throne. Unselfconsciously, she

  reached up to link her arm in mine, walking us both towards the door.

  The flagstones outside were dry of dew already. The sky was a perfect

  infinite blue, and the sun not yet risen.

  ‘I don’t mean that I don’t want to die.’ She made a small smile,

  evidently a strain. ‘Although I don’t. But I need to live out this

  generation, and I need my daughter to rule the next one. And not just for

  Alexandria’s sake.’

  She looked at me with some concern.

  ‘You need to sleep. But we’ll go back by way of the Library – Ahhotep,

  go tell them we’re coming – because there are things I need to discuss

  with you.’

  Passing the building last night had given me no idea of its size. The

  lemon-coloured light of the dawn illuminated roof on roof, storey on

  storey, of the Royal Library; and I suspected that the obelisk-fronted

  door we entered by was only one of many opening into a library

  complex.

  Inside, the stone of walls and floor shone pale, echoing daylight

  through the corridors and halls. Stepping over the threshold, I was hit by

  the scent of parchment, papyrus, scrolls . . . Plunged into memory of the

  scriptorium in Rodrigo Sanguerra’s castle.

  Our steps echoed. I followed Ty-ameny’s small figure through gallery

  after gallery of leather scroll-cases, lost among squat pillars and vast

  square-lintelled archways. The rooms grew smaller and scruffier after a

  while, and the Queen called greetings to eunuch clerks already at their

  desks, doing reconstruction work on old papyruses. Cheerful voices

  called out from one chamber to the next.

  About the time I thought we’d run out of building – and owned myself

  completely lost – Ty-ameny turned sharply right and loped up a flight of

  sandstone steps, that were less surprisingly worn away into a dip in the

  middle.

  The arch at the top opened into a bright gallery. Carved windows

  opened into a piazza below us.

  No books. No scrolls. Because the light would fade them. They want good light for . . .

  163

  ‘The printing- machina.’

  The Pharaoh-Queen’s subjects must have been working through the

  night. Herr Mainz – Herr Gutenberg – stood beside a wooden frame,

  gesturing expansively, and broke off to grin like a badger at Ty-ameny.

  ‘Great Queen! We should have it finished before the end of today. Or

  at least the prototype.’

  Ty-ameny strode up to stand beside him, not even as high as his

  shoulder. Her eyes glittered as she appeared to follow his report of his

  progress.

  ‘You also know how this works?’ she demanded of me.

  Gutenberg stroked blunted fingers over a tray of metal type. ‘Messer

  Ilario does not. No man but I, not even in my Guild.’

  Storms on the voyage through the Aegean might have robbed Ty-

  ameny of her printing- machina; likewise the cholera and plague endemic

  to large cities. I thought perhaps Ty-ameny might persuade him to write

  his plans down, where I had failed.

  Ty-ameny smiled at him. Her tiny ruddy-skinned hand stroked the

  printing- machina’s frame as if it were a blood-horse.

  ‘Not the details. The meaning. That in the time the scriptorium takes

  to copy a scroll once, I can have you set the type to print the same words.

  And in the time it takes to copy a scroll twice – I can have five hundred copies, printed and ready!’

  She wiped her fingers down her plain linen robes, seemingly unaware

  of the black grease.

  Gutenberg very precisely explained, in a mixture of German and bad

  Carthaginian Latin, how it would take longer to set up his lead letters the

  first time than to copy them on paper, but after that . . . Ty-ameny

  clearly wasn’t listening. As Gutenberg went back to his machine, she

  took my arm, gazing up into my face, and pointed.

  ‘You see that?’

  I stared into an empty corner of the gallery.

  ‘A bucket.’ Embarrassed by memory of what happened in the throne

  room, I added, ‘Master Rekhmire’ told me – you have them in every

  room here, because of the fear of fire.’

  I thought of Masaccio’s cluttered workshop, full of wooden frames,

  canvas, pigments, oils, buckets of sand and water. The same principle,

  even if he had appeared to work in chaos.

  Ty-ameny released my arm.

  ‘Yes. We have buckets. Water and sand. And all the walls are

  masonry. And there are courtyards between various buildings in the

  complex, to act as firebreaks, and cellars below, insulated from one

  another by the living rock. Because these walls are piled high and stuffed

  full with papyrus, vellum, paper . . . Everything flammable. Even our

  shelves are carved out of stone.’

  Her gaze searched out Gutenberg’s tray of lead letters.

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  ‘There have been minor fires before. We’ve lost scrolls. Scrolls that

  were the last copies of their work. And it doesn’t matter how many clerks

  I put into the scriptorium, they won’t catch up the copying of four

  thousand years of collecting. And one day, one day . . . One day

  everything we have will burn.’

  Finding myself close enough to the wall to touch it, I ran a finger down

  a seamless masonry join. ‘You can’t know that—’

  Ty-ameny’s head jerked up, as if she woke from a deep sleep or vision.

  ‘I can!’

  Ahhotep muttered something; she chopped her tiny hand down in a

  surprisingly fierce gesture. She turned sloe-dark eyes on me, and I was

  not conscious of her small stature.

  ‘If there’s no great fire, still, we’re not as great a power as we once were. Conquerors will pass through with fire and sword. It will be

  Carthage or the Turks,’ she added, with a flat pragmatic certainty.

  I was unsure that Gutenberg understood her Alexandrine Latin; he

  straightened and frowned at her.

  Ty-ameny paced to the window, and it did not change her dignity in

  the least that she must stand up on her toes to stare out at the city below.

  ‘Cousin Rekhmire’ could have told you this, but I see he has been

  circumspect. Still, it’s not a secret among my advisers. We were a great

  empire – once. Now we have only one city, with no hinterland. The

  Turks have taken our old lands, and nibble away at our borders here.

  And Carthage is jealous of any sea-power not hers.’

  Her hand gripped the sculpted frame possessively.

  ‘I’d co
unted on having my reign and my daughter’s before someone

  takes this city and burns it. Time enough to copy the most valuable

  volumes here – or at least some of them. I no longer believe we have two

  generations. I may be the last of the line of Pharaohs. But now I have

  this—’

  She turned about, her gaze hungry on Gutenberg and the machina.

  ‘Now – we can turn out a flood of knowledge! Copies of every scroll

  and book and document in the Royal Library – many copies. I’ll send

  them as royal gifts to the kings of Francia and Persia and Carthage if I have to. I’ll sell them cheap through Venice. This city will send out so many copies that no fire or war or shipwreck or disaster can ever destroy

  every copy of a work. This knowledge will not be lost.’

  Between the Egyptian Ahhotep and Gutenberg, Ty-ameny appeared

  the size of a child. Speaking, there was enough desperate energy in her to

  make someone three times her size.

  I should ask if I can paint her!

  Hard on the heels of that came another realisation.

  ‘You don’t mean that Alexandria will fall some day in the far-off

  future, do you, Great Queen? You expect it in our lifetime.’

  In her lifetime.

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  In mine.

  In Onorata’s . . .

  ‘Soon,’ Ty-amenhotep said. ‘But I’ll sell printed scrolls to the Franks,

  to North Africa, to Persia and the Silk Road. Pages for pennies. If not for

  the fact that men don’t value what they don’t pay for, I’d give them

  away! But every ducat that they earn, I swear I’ll turn to hiring more

  scribes, and building more of Herr Mainz’s machines!’

  I grew up hearing stories of Constantinople as a city great beyond all

  cities of the earth, last home of Pharaonic Egypt, repository of occult

  knowledge, free market of traders from every country in Europe and

  Africa, and from impossibly distant Turkey and Hind . . .

  Hearing a very little of the hollowness of that image in her tone, a

  shiver went down my spine. I thought of Alexandrine Constantinople’s

  thick walls reduced to rubble and dust – but their inheritance, a river of

  knowledge, flowing out first to all the quarters of the earth.

  Ty-ameny beamed at the German.

  ‘We’ll need many of these machinae. I think I can persuade my

  council to give you whatever funds you need. How long will it take you