by Mary Gentle
I accepted the change of subject. ‘How long to Taraco?’
‘Once we get a wind? A few days.’ Rekhmire’ frowned. ‘We need to have our plans definitely made…’
The deck barely moved beneath me, although I heard the constant creak and slow shift of a becalmed vessel. Above the stern, on the deck that was our roof, I heard one of the bosuns yelling the omnipresent ‘Mâshàng!’, ‘Jump to it!’, and a thunder of hurrying feet.
Onorata’s yelling shifted up to an irritated scream.
‘Take her along to the animal pens,’ I directed Carrasco.
He ducked his head in an awkward gesture of respect. I watched him go in and pick her up from the cradle, together with the sail-awning we habitually tied up to shade her. Tottola and Attila sat visible in the far corner, playing at dice. For all the unlikelihood of an attack here, the brothers still slept watch and watch about, except for an hour or so of overlap.
Attila pocketed a string of the odd bronze coins, pierced through with a square hole, that the Chin men used as gambling chips, and stood to buckle on his sword. Approaching Carrasco’s shoulder, Attila ignored the man, but hummed in a low bass at my daughter where she stared at him.
A lullaby, I realised after a moment. I couldn’t help but smile.
Rekhmire’’s gaze followed mine. ‘Ah. They’re fond of the little one…Of course, they don’t have to wake to feed her three hours before dawn.’
If his expression seemed neutral, I could hear amusement in his voice.
‘Remind me never to hire an Alexandrine nurse,’ I remarked. ‘The Iberians are much superior…’
Rekhmire’ huffled a suppressed laugh.
Except that I can hire nobody.
If not for my father, I would be trying to keep the child on what I could earn as a painter: that thought still wakes me up in the long hours before dawn, in a cold sweat.
Breeding itself out of selfishness, I thought.
Because not only are there sufficient painters of funeral portraits and chapel frescoes in this world that I would be hard put to keep us–it would also mean I must work at that hard enough that I would never have a chance to stop, and learn to improve.
If I had a true mother’s instinct, I would not at times hate my child.
Surprisingly enough, the only relief from that fear had come in Alexandria, when in a fit of sleepless volubility I voiced it to Ty-ameny.
‘Great Sekhmet’s claws!’ She had shown her white teeth in a grin. ‘I hated all of my three! Asenath wouldn’t feed; Esemkhebe wouldn’t stop, and Peshet was always bawling her head off for me when I needed urgently to sit in council. And then my breasts would leak milk all through the diplomatic meetings.’
Ty-ameny had shaken her head.
‘Some mothers only like infants. Perhaps that’s why they have more. I didn’t begin to love mine until they were old enough to move about and talk.’
It made me feel a little less guilty.
I felt a touch on my arm, and returned to myself to find Rekhmire’ frowning slightly.
‘I had meant to broach this before,’ he remarked, apparently idly. ‘As an assistant to one of the Royal Library’s buyers, you’re entitled to a finder’s fee, and a small remittance when your work is otherwise satisfactory.’
He indicated other drawings spilling across the low bed. The war-junk, from every angle that I could contrive; including the upper crow’s-nests.
‘You intend these as studies for a painting, but I doubt you ignorant of the fact that copies will be well-received by Ty-ameny and her philosophers.’
The philosophers having taken thorough advantage of my presence before we left Alexandria, I thought I could speak reasonably well as to their infinite curiosity.
I forced a smile. ‘If I copy scrolls you want, yes; pay me a fee. You can have copies of these drawings in any case. It’s not like I’m Ty-ameny’s cousin…’
‘Do you despise spies so much then?’
It came as a lightly-voiced question, Rekhmire’’s gaze not on me, but directed at Carrasco and Attila’s preparations in the far cabin, and Tottola’s quiet amusement at the sheer number of things they took with them. The Egyptian spoke as if the answer would mean nothing of any significance.
I said, ‘You were born to it. Alexandria’s your home. It’s not my country.’
He seemed unsatisfied.
I got up to hold the main door open, while Carrasco and baby and parasol and escort left the cabins. Not that I mistrust Attila or Tottola, but I knew how little Rekhmire’ cared to discuss any business in front of Ramiro Carrasco.
The cabin’s floor had been padded in places with some cloth very like a tapestry; it was soft under my feet when I kicked my sandals off. Padding back towards Rekhmire’, I observed, ‘You want to know if I despise you, for being a spy.’
The Egyptian rapidly smoothed down the folds of his linen kilt. That action was automatic by now: it hid his scars.
Apparently studying the ink-scroll hanging down from one ceiling-beam, he remarked, ‘That would be one of the reasons I have never forced you to see what my business is.’
‘Chun zi!’
His eyebrows climbed up towards his shaven scalp. ‘And that would mean?’
‘“Moron”!’
‘Fascinating.’ He took his tablets out of the bag at his belt, and incised a quick note in the wax. If he had been another man, I would have said he was suppressing a grin. ‘Why is it you can be impolite in thirteen languages, painter?’
‘Probably the people I travel around with, book-buyer!’
The Egyptian snorted.
‘Of course,’ I added, ‘I may not be saying it right. My ear still isn’t adjusted to Chin voices.’
‘Perhaps,’ Rekhmire’ agreed. ‘But the tone was unmistakable–at least to a foreign barbarian…’
He glanced away from me, at the dark wooden beams, and the intricately inlaid chests we had been loaned for our belongings. If he was pleased not to be despised, he was also embarrassed, although it would have been necessary to know him well to be aware of that.
‘Listen—’ He held up his hand.
For a long moment I heard nothing, only the natural creaking and shifting of a ship, even one this size.
Creaking in rhythm.
I shot to the cabin door and looked up.
Against the hazy sky, all of the sails were belling out, one by one, to catch the wind.
2
On the morning that we passed the Balearic Islands, Onorata taught herself to roll.
I had her on the floor-tapestry that the Chin-men used instead of fur rugs, laying on my belly so I might look her in the eye. She went from staring vaguely in the direction of the ceiling to thrusting with one still-small arm at the floor, and was abruptly over on her front.
We surveyed each other in equal surprise.
She broke out into a crow of laughter.
‘Clever!’ I wondered if she had wit enough yet to imitate, and if she copied the position of her mother-father. I sat up, thinking to encourage her to roll back the other way.
A fist rapped against the slatted wooden door, the knocking done in a Frankish fashion.
‘In!’
A dark-haired figure slunk in from the deck: Ramiro Carrasco de Luis. He shot a wary look over at Tottola, apparently asleep in one corner with his arms and ankles crossed.
‘May I speak to you, madonna? Mistress?’
Three months of seeing me in skirts in Venice evidently established me as a woman so firmly in his mind I will not shift it.
I sighed, and reached over to nudge Tottola’s boot.
The large man’s eyes were already open.
‘Will you take her for a while?’ I nodded towards the inner room. ‘I won’t be long. It’s probably those chou ba guai goats again!’
Tottola’s dark expression changed to a grin at that. He scooped an indignant Onorata up and made for the door.
Clearly he thinks Ramiro Carrasco w
ill one day try again to assassinate me.
Well, I was hardly joking when I told Carrasco that, as a slave, I would take care to be trusted for a long time before I killed my master. And then the judges might blame someone else.
The German man-at-arms snorted, ducking under the door lintel to the inner room. Ramiro Carrasco kept quiet, in a manner that told me, if he wasn’t yet used to being a slave, he had some idea of what behaviour was expected of him.
I stood, tugging my tunic straight, picking up my leather sack. The tiny inlaid drawers of the Chin furniture ideally suit painting tools. Remembering to clean and put them away is essential, however, and my hellion child had distracted me.
‘You can get me a bucket of hot water when you’re done…’
Ramiro Carrasco stood awkwardly in the middle of the cabin; a life study would show tension in his shoulders and spine.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘I need to talk to you.’ He glanced at the door to the back cabin, that stood ajar, not by accident. I saw him take a breath, expanding his sternum; he scowled to himself.
His feet were bare, dirty, and callused, now. He wore a bleached and dirty tunic, pulled down over a Frankish shirt that hung to his mid-thigh, and his hose were rolled down to his knees in the heat. I saw his sleek black hair had grown down to touch his ears, and was no longer sleek, but breaking out into curled ends. Someone must have given him orders to shave: dark stubble patched his jaw.
His hand came up, fingers hooking under the smooth iron of his collar. In the clear light from the cabin window it was possible to read :: I am owned by Ilario:: engraved in Venetian script.
‘Ramiro?’
‘I have to…’ His head came up.
For a stark heartbeat I wondered, Should I call Honorius’s men?
Ramiro Carrasco bent down, awkwardly, on one knee and then the next, until he was kneeling in front of me.
‘Get up!’ I must sound shrill, I realised.
‘Please.’ The Iberian hunched into himself. His face showed a shining pink where the stubble did not grow. His fingers locked into each other. ‘Please, I’m begging you–slaves beg, don’t they? Please. Ilario mistress—’
I shot a glance at the inner door; Tottola was not visible. He would be alertly listening. Judging whether to guard Onorata or myself first.
Flushing as red as Carrasco, fully as embarrassed, I hissed, ‘Stand up! What is this about?’
His head lifted.
I saw a vestige of Ramiro Carrasco de Luis in Venice in the jut of his jaw. His hands shook where he clenched them together. All of his body where he knelt down on the war-junk’s deck had a faint shiver to it.
I grabbed him by the shoulders of his tunic and hauled, not caring that I heard fabric tear. All but throwing him up off the deck and onto his feet, I spat out, ‘You don’t kneel to me!’
He stared wildly.
Too used to thinking of ‘Ilaria’, with a woman’s strength.
I stepped forward and he automatically stepped back, stopping only as his spine came into hard contact with the ship’s hull beside the outer door.
He blurted out, ‘You have to kill me!’
‘What?’
Attila’s voice sounded from the deck outside. ‘Need any help?’
I stretched across Carrasco to open the outer door.
The German man-at-arms leaned up against the door-frame, apparently casual. I had seen him draw his blade in a heartbeat from just such a stance.
‘What a way to live a life!’ I muttered, saw him grin with feral teeth, and nodded politely. ‘I’ll shout if I need anything.’
Attila returned the nod. I believed he chose to view me a male at such moments: a man, who of course would need little assistance with Carrasco.
I pushed the door closed as Attila placed his back to it.
‘Now.’ I stared at Ramiro Carrasco without moving away from him. ‘What is this?’
He stood as if the hull held him up. ‘You have to kill me.’
‘Kill you?’
In the port’s clear light, his skin had an unhealthy shine. Ochre and green, if I had to choose pigments. Lines cut deeply into his face, and could have been dehydration, or pain, or fear, or all those things.
I shook my head, and pointed at a low stool. ‘Sit.’
Ramiro Carrasco looked uncertain. I recognised that. The slave does not sit before the master.
I am doing you no favours, if you ever pass to another master, I reflected.
The unlikelihood of that circumstance made me feel a little better. I indicated the stool again. ‘Do as I say.’
He collapsed onto the lacquered and padded stool as if his legs folded up under him. His eyes did not leave my face.
‘Why would I kill you?’ Exasperation sharpened my voice to high tenor; I dragged it downward. ‘Carrasco. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have bought you in Venice!’
He began slowly to rub his hands over his arms. For all the heat, I could see the fine black hairs at his wrists standing up on gooseflesh.
‘This ship is going to Taraconensis.’
No question in his tone. Keeping any rumour from a ship’s crew is a lost cause, but Carrasco in any case might know the Balearic coasts by sight.
He raised his head. Luminous eyes showed rawly accessible pain, hatred, fear. ‘You have to kill me. Because otherwise I’ll betray you.’
I could not doubt the shaking honesty in his tone.
‘Why would you tell me about it?’
‘So that you can order your men–if I’m within Lord Videric’s reach—’ Ramiro Carrasco stuttered over the Aldra’s name. ‘He’ll find out that I’m here. Once we sail into Taraco…He’ll threaten my family. He’ll offer me what he can give me, but he’ll threaten them, and he owns them!’
He spoke in Iberian, clearly forgetting in his desperation that Attila and Tottola were both the other side of thin doors. He made fists of his hands, clenching them so hard that his nails must break the skin in a minute.
‘What can Videric offer you?’ I hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t trust him to offer you freedom?’
Ramiro’s mouth curved a little, only at one side. I recall that ironic smile from Venice, when this dishevelled man was Federico’s sleek secretary.
I do not expect to feel empathy for the man who would have killed me—
‘Freedom after a fashion.’ Carrasco shrugged. ‘He’ll offer me a quick death.’
I stared.
‘He’ll offer to keep my family safe,’ he said, ‘and he’ll offer to give me what I’d promise, if I were him–a quick execution, to spare me the judicial torture of a slave, or being left to die after some ambush with my guts hanging out.’
He bit at his lip, and rose awkwardly to his feet as if he could not bear to be sitting while I stood. We were much of a height.
Slaves on their own–as, among foreigners like these Chin-men–have no acquaintance to confide in. Only too much time to think.
This is what Ramiro Carrasco has been thinking, over the cradle of my child.
‘You want me to order your death, instead?’
His face crumpled in a way an adult man’s should not.
‘I want you to save my family! If I’m dead, then there’s no reason for him to harm them!’
I cut him short with a cruel truth. ‘Videric may make an example of them. To convince the men he uses as spies after you.’
Ramiro Carrasco wiped a hand over his face. He sweated now, but not from the humid heat. Bitterness and desperation sounded in his voice. ‘I’m already your slave. One day you’ll punish me for assaulting you in Venice. Why not make it now? I’ll beg for punishment. But you have to keep me away from Taraco—’
‘Christus! No. Stop embarrassing yourself!’
I wanted to shake him. I dared not touch him.
Because he is my slave, and no man can stop me if I whip the skin off his back.
Or if I kill him.
Ramiro Carrasco l
ooked at me with sheer desperation. ‘I accept I am your slave. In God’s name, do something, because I can’t!’
A man cannot be watched all day, every day.
If Ramiro Carrasco de Luis feels driven enough by this to kill himself, what will drive him is the contrast between the free man of Venice and the slave. There is no action he can take against the situation he is in. I have cause to know how fear is strongest then.
Carrasco let out a sound that was both sigh and groan. With one ragged swift movement, he drove his fist against the wooden wall: a loud crack echoed around the cabin.
‘No—’ I waved Attila away as the blond man-at-arms swung the door open again. ‘Leave us!’
The door clicked shut.
I held my hand out. ‘Let me see that.’
Carrasco’s fingers felt cold in mine. Blood welled out of the scrapes on his knuckles.
Manipulating the joints with my thumbs got a suppressed grunt out of him, but I felt no unusual movement of bone under my pressure.
I wish I might get the flayed image of the Royal Mathematicians’ autopsy from my mind to paper. I do not desire to know what the living flesh is like under the skin. Or how easily a man may be flayed alive, rather than dead.
But the truth is, my charcoal drawings of hands have been better since then.
Ramiro Carrasco muttered, ‘What can a slave say to a master that’s honest? You’re right. Send me off to be beaten; have done with it!’
‘So you can jump over the ship’s rail?’
‘No!’
He trod on my words far too quickly.
I pushed his hand back towards him. He flexed it, looking down; unkempt black hair falling into his eyes.
He did not look at me. ‘Perhaps I wish you to believe I would do that.’
Men take their most stupid actions in such undecided passionate states.
‘Sit.’ I pointed at the low stool.
Returning to my sack for paper and a stub of charcoal, I saw in peripheral vision how he sank slowly down onto the stool again, never taking his eyes off me.
Long experience as a slave has me used to judging men, sometimes even accurately. But I read neither souls nor minds; I doubted I could read in him whether he was honest or not, with me or with himself.