by Mary Gentle
interest in my daughter.
The book-buyer, finding me holding her on the room’s balcony again
one morning, bent over to study her more closely. Onorata was solidly
asleep, one closed fist resting up under her fat chins, and I stroked with a
forefinger at the dark hair slicked down on her scalp.
Rekhmire’ straightened up. ‘When do they get interesting?’
‘They what?’
‘Infants. Will she talk soon? Or move around more?’
I raised an eyebrow at him, as much in his own fashion as I could
imitate. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I’m a book-buyer, not a nurse!’ Half affronted and half amused, he
gazed down at me. ‘Aren’t you supposed to know these things?’
‘I was the youngest. I expect Sunilda or Matasuntha could tell you.
And I’m a painter!’
Tottola strolled in from the anterooms, evidently changing shift on
guard duty, and gave the Egyptian a look that clearly inquired And the thing that’s so funny is—? , without needing a word. He stripped off his mail-shirt and garments, abandoning them for striped linen robes that
reminded me painfully sharply of Iberia, nodded respectfully to me, and
fell instantly asleep on his palliasse.
Onorata began a grumble in her sleep. Rocking her in the crook of my
arm, I discovered she found that motion no substitute for milk.
Rekhmire’ offered her a blunt-nailed thumb, with no better success.
I said, ‘I’ll get Carrasco to make her feed.’
Rekhmire’ made himself scarce.
Ty-ameny’s interest was the authentic tone of the Alexandrine
philosopher. She visited, a day or two after, and leaned forward from
among the cushions, studying my child who had fallen asleep on a
blanket on the floor.
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How I’ll ever convince anyone of the hellion she is, when she angelically sleeps in their presence—
‘Is she normal?’ Ty-ameny asked.
Any other woman, I would have slapped. It was the Alexandrine
curiosity in her tone that restrained me, more than her rank. Although
that carried its weight.
‘It appears so, Aldro. Until she grows up, who can say?’
The small woman nodded, and leaned back.
Without requesting permission, I settled on the goats’-wool blankets
beside Onorata.
Rekhmire’ remained standing.
Ty-ameny complained almost sulkily, ‘You’re making my neck ache.
Sit down, in Ra’s name!’
Rekhmire’ bowed as deeply as slaves do. With the help of his stick, he
moved as if to seat himself on the stone ledge beyond her.
Her hand closed over his wrist as he passed.
Rekhmire’ let her arrest him. I saw in a heart’s beat all their history in
the glance between them. I felt curiously shut out. Although the ruling of
New Alexandria is no concern of mine.
Ty-ameny’s cheeks darkened a little, as if the heat of the room flushed
her face. She moved her hand to her chin, as if she would stroke the
Pharaoh’s false beard that she was not wearing today. ‘It was a
reasonable question!’
‘Yes, Great Queen,’ Rekhmire’ said mildly.
The queen looked at him through narrowed eyes.
Without turning, she said, ‘Ilario, I apologise for not asking that in a
more tactful manner.’
I bowed, catching how Rekhmire’’s face warmed as she spoke.
‘Too many people have thought it a reasonable question for me to like
it, Great Queen,’ I said.
‘I believe that was the reason I was just slapped down.’ She spoke
darkly, looking up at Rekhmire’. ‘Isn’t that right, cousin?’
‘The wisdom of the everlasting Gods is spoken through the mouth of
the Pharaoh-Queen.’ Rekhmire’’s monumental face broke into a smile
that made him look twenty. ‘Most of the time . . . ’
‘Stop towering over me, book-buyer. I can still shorten you by a head,
any day of the week!’
‘Of course, cousin.’ Rekhmire’’s bow was so elegantly proper that, had
I been Ty-ameny, I would have thrown something at him. I saw her
small fingers tighten around one of the cushions as she grinned. The
large Egyptian moved, seating himself on the bench beside her, and
under cover of smoothing out the folds of his linen kilt, shot me a
reassuring look.
I envied them their closeness.
‘In fact,’ Ty-ameny added, with more gravitas than one might expect
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from a woman with the stature of a twelve-year-old, ‘if it would set your
mind at ease to have her examined, the best of my Royal Mathematicians
and physicians will do so.’
I could manage only ‘Thank you’, but it must have been clear what I
meant.
The next several days had all my attention on my child, who bawled
dispiritingly whenever an Alexandrine picked her up, and looked at me
as if I were the Frankish version of Judas.
All of them pronounced her normal, but let me know that the extent of
their knowledge – ‘Without dissection!’, Bakennefi Aa cheerily remarked
– must be limited.
Slaves continued to bring food to our quarters at regular intervals. I
sunk myself into the enjoyment of palace living – since I did not know if I
would ever live in a palace again – and on two days when it was too hot
to go outside, or do more than lay down on the great bed on the dais in
my chamber, I dozed beside Onorata’s cradle.
I woke on the third day, bored.
Zheng He, on land, would not have barbarians on his ship while he
was not there.
I had itchy fingers, and established myself under a striped awning on
another of the palace balconies, with Onorata asleep in a hooded cradle,
and a stack of old parchments and a stoppered flask of oak-gall ink.
The striped awning reminded me of Taraco. I began a letter to
Honorius, got as far as Honoured Father, and the ink dried on my quill while I tried to think of what I could say that would do no harm if
someone opened the letter.
‘ Father’ is not harmless.
Nor was anything else I could come up with.
I turned the parchment over, shaping the quill with an evilly sharp pen
knife that I hadn’t been able to resist in Alexandria’s main market square,
both for its Damascus steel and its beautiful walnut haft, and set about
sketching the lines of the aqueduct that came into the palace here. Arches
of yellow brick cast shadows across a square. People came and went
around the statue of a griffin-like creature on a plinth. A white mongrel
dog paused long enough to cock its leg.
The sun arriving overhead, I took Onorata back to our chambers and
our own balcony, and set about drawing the great harbour, and the mass
of streets going down from here to the massive walls.
It turned into a study of Zheng He’s distant warship, but the size of it
made the perspective look wrong.
I checked it as mathematically as Masaccio and Leon Battista had ever
instructed me, found it correct, and wondered, What do I do when reality itself seems incredible, even by an accurate description?
Chin on fist, I stared down absently into the harbour, looking for
an
other subject. I might draw Onorata, if Rekhmire’ wasn’t already
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making smart remarks about how many drawings of the child he’s
expected to make comment on . . .
I began a listless study of another ship moored between Europa and
Asia. Dwarfed by comparison with Zheng He’s it might be, but the lines
interested me – not a war-ship, or a fat-bellied cargo-ship, or a dhow, but
a fast light galley with canvas-shrouded arbalests on prow and stern for
defence.
My quill-point scritched at the treated surface of the parchment; I
made a reasonable attempt at the sterncastle and rudder before I startled,
and the pen blotted a great spurt of ink over all.
I have drawn a ship like this before, and when I did – it was a Carthaginian bireme!
‘Agatha and Jude!’ It was safer to swear by Christian saints in this city,
if you were a foreigner. I mopped at the ink with my sleeve, but the thin
cotton only absorbed most of the liquid, leaving enough to shroud the
carefully-drawn lines.
‘That will be the envoy,’ Rekhmire’ said, an arm’s length behind me.
I started again, jerked my wrist, and sent a hooked line of ink through
the harbour wall. ‘Caius Gaius Judas! Stop creeping up on me!’
The tall Egyptian grinned, entirely unrepentant, and bent to stroke a
fingertip over Onorata’s brow. She wriggled a little, and settled deeper
into sleep. Rekhmire’ looked up and to the side.
‘Shadow will be off this balcony soon. You’ll need to take her in.’
‘ You take her in,’ I muttered. ‘This is the Carthaginian envoy? The one you expected? Why’s he here?’
‘As far as I know, nothing but a previously-arranged diplomatic visit.
Ty-ameny’s ministers are running around like drunken piglets,’
Rekhmire’ observed, in response to my querying look. ‘Now the jaws
truly bite – Carthage’s envoy will expect to see their latest gift on display
in the Pharaoh-Queen’s throne room. None of the Royal Mathemat-
icians can yet promise it won’t do to her as it did to Masaccio. She has a
choice of offending Carthage – which we can’t afford – or afford to have
them find that out! – or else put herself in danger of murder by the golem.’
The ink had dried on my nib. I scratched it against my thumb, wishing
for treated wooden boards on which I could use encaustic wax, or
Masaccio’s expensive pigments, and try out designs for Honorius’s altar-
panels.
‘No.’ I looked up, blinking. ‘She doesn’t.’
Rekhmire’’s brows, stark under his shaved head, dipped down, casting
all his face into severe lines.
‘If we smash the golem’s limbs, or chain it, or immobilise it safely in
some way, that would be no less offensive to Carthage—’
I interrupted him before his rising tone could wake Onorata. It was
difficult to keep my own voice sufficiently quiet.
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‘ No. They don’t have to break the damned thing to stop it hurting the
Pharaoh-Queen. I know how we can do it. I know.’
Rekhmire’’s sceptical look had hope badly suppressed under the
surface. ‘You know?’
I ignored his stress on the initial word.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Cheese glue.’
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18
‘Cheese glue?’ the Pharaoh-Queen of Alexandria said.
‘Cheese glue.’
‘ Cheese glue?’
One of the Royal Mathematicians muttered, ‘Cheese glue?’, in an
equally bemused tone.
Rekhmire’ smoothly intervened. ‘Hear Ilario out, Great Name of
Sekhmet; I think you should.’
Ty-ameny’s sloe-black eyes darted to his face. Whatever she found
there was sufficient to have her not throw me straight out of the Royal
apartments.
‘Explain,’ she demanded grimly.
‘Cheese glue’s made with limestone and . . . cheese.’
I shuffled a little where I sat, hearing the words as they must sound to
her.
‘Yes, it sounds foolish, but I know this part of my trade! The best kind
is cheese that’s gone bad. Great Queen, when I was in Rome, Mastro
Masaccio had me crumbling cheese and limestone and mixing the glue.
You use it to size boards for painting, especially if your board has to be
made up of several smaller pieces. When it sets . . . ’
In memory I still hear Masaccio’s hammer.
‘I saw examples twice, in his workshop,’ I said, seeing the Alexandrines
perk up at the sound of empirical evidence. ‘Once of a six-part panel put
together before the plague came to Europa, that a man couldn’t break
with all his strength. The other was more subtle, I think – an older board,
that had a funeral portrait on it from Hannibal Barca’s time. The wax
was gone, and the pigments too, and the wood broken in many places.’
I held finger and thumb a half-inch apart.
‘But the glue that had held the wood together, that was still intact!
Where the worms had eaten the wood all away, the cheese and lime glue
stood up alone, rigid, like a framework.’
I took a breath, realising the frown on the Royal Mathematician
Bakennefi Aa’s face was calculation rather than scorn.
‘When it ages, it yellows, but initially it sets clear. Like glass. You
would not ever know it was there.’ My mouth felt dry. I swallowed.
Rekhmire’ remained silent where he sat beside me.
Either he desires me to have all the credit for this – or all the blame!
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Ty-ameny’s frown was now of a different kind, I saw. She asked, ‘How
would this help us?’
She’s willing to consider it!
‘The golem’s limbs are articulated.’ The memory of stone fingers was
one I pushed aside almost by habit now. ‘Each of the arms, knees,
fingers, feet – they’re all jointed, by metal gears. If you were to pour prepared glue into the joint mechanisms and let it set . . . ’
Ty-ameny blinked as if dazed.
‘And no one could see this?’ Her black gaze snapped into focus. ‘At a
distance, say, of – Ahhotep, over there, beside the window. If I am here,
and he is there, will he see this has been done?’
I considered it, heart racing, not wanting to seem too sure of myself.
‘No,’ I said at last. ‘Not even if he knew what he was looking for. The
joints are brass, they shine. The extra coating will shine the same way.’
The room of advisers was silent for the space of ten heartbeats;
Tyameny put her chin in her hand. She gazed unseeing at Rekhmire’,
silhouetted against the white afternoon heat.
My voice creaked and dropped down into the lower male registers. ‘At
the very worst, it would give you warning, when the joints move and the
glue shatters. There would be time enough to move away. If the cheese
glue’s allowed time to cure and set – the golem will pull itself to pieces before those joints will move.’
‘Bakennefi Aa.’ Ty-ameny gave the Royal Mathematician and his
cohorts a look that indicated they should – as rapidly as possible – search
out sources in the Library. As the three Bakennefi brothers bowed and
left, she turned back to me.
�
�You know how to mix this? The proportions of each; all the
ingredients?’
That amount of implied responsibility cut off my breath. My heart
pounded in palpable thuds. I swallowed, I hoped imperceptibly, and
nodded.
‘You mix a batch,’ the Pharaoh-Queen said. ‘My mathematicians will
run tests. But, at the same time – the golem will be treated with your
substance, too. Where it stands, beside the royal throne; undertake the
treatment there.’
She shot a glance at Rekhmire’.
‘Plausible ways can be found to delay the Carthaginian envoy’s formal
audience for a few more days?’
‘He’s a diplomat, Great Queen, he’ll expect it.’
The corner of her mouth tweaked up, although she nodded solemnly
enough. Her gaze switched back to me.
‘ Cheese glue!’ she muttered.
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19
The envoy of the King-Caliph Ammianus of Carthage was received
with the proper amount of ceremony, Pharaoh-Queen Ty-amenhotep
giving the impression – as I note Alexandrines like to do – that she
condescended to pay respect to a member of a younger and more
barbaric civilisation.
Rekhmire’, shielding me from the view of the envoy’s entourage,
murmured, ‘If he does anything in public, he’s a fool.’
The great audience hall had space enough to hide me, veiled and
therefore female, among Ty-ameny’s advisers. I hoped that if the
Carthaginian envoy had been briefed at all, he would be looking for
Rekhmire’’s scribe, or at best the painter’s apprentice from Rome, and
not the pregnant woman of Venice.
Apprehension made my mouth dry.
Onorata lay newly-fed and grumpy up in our apartments, with Ramiro
Carrasco and the German brothers and a squad of Ty-ameny’s Royal
Guard in attendance. I didn’t trust the Carthaginians not to attempt
abduction of my baby. Nor, evidently, did the Pharaoh-Queen.
Brass horns blared.
The crowds at the doors shifted.
I guessed the envoy’s party had begun their way up the Thousand
Stairs to the Daughter of Ra’s palace. In the white heat of afternoon.
Surely a calculated insult?
‘He may well think that,’ Rekhmire’ confirmed my suggestion. ‘But
he’s from the Darkness. The sun in the middle of the day addles the