by Mary Gentle
It had been an awkward conversation, as it always is when one accuses a man of theft.
‘As far as I can make out, they had a court painter staying over from Duke Philip’s lands in Burgundy–the Duke sent him out to paint possible brides, but he sailed to Carthage to see the light under the Penitence. As for what part of the Burgundian lands…’ I shrugged.
‘Ty-ameny would be happy to get reports from Bruges,’ Rekhmire’ observed, as if the matter were of no great interest to him.
He added, ‘Burgundy is becoming one of the richest kingdoms of the Franks, and therefore likely to have a greater influence as times goes on.’
I found myself in a mood for taking no prisoners. ‘Rekhmire’–can you still spy with your knee permanently injured?’
He did not look at me, but gazed down at the backs of his hands, spreading the fingers as wide as tendons will allow. ‘You know the strangest thing? It makes me feel less than a man. Which, from a eunuch…’
His snort of amusement sounded bitter.
I persisted. ‘But you can still work for Ty-ameny?’
He looked puzzled. ‘Oh yes.’
I turned the wooden fragment about in my hands. ‘The idea of staying seven years in one place, even in a workshop…Do you know, I think I begin to understand why you like travelling around? But could I paint something like this without masters teaching me their secrets? Which they won’t, if I’m not an apprentice.’
Rekhmire’ took my wrist and turned the painted surface to the light. ‘There might be treatises like Leon Battista’s. You learned from that.’
‘That’s true. But…’
Feet scurried on the deck. I glanced up to see Ramiro Carrasco duck past in something between fear and respect on his way to the cabins.
He barely looked at me. All his wariness was for Rekhmire’.
I don’t believe the book-buyer would take up beating him!
In a tone of controlled sarcasm, Rekhmire’ remarked, ‘Suppose you travel as one of the Queen’s book-buyers, while Captain Honorius brings up Onorata–you won’t be able to take your pet slave with you if he’s back in Taraco changing nappies.’
The Egyptian added something under his breath that a creak of masts and sails prevented me hearing clearly.
I thought it was, Or do you think he’ll give you brats as well?
I covered the image carefully, closing the wooden flap down, and put it back into my purse.
‘Rekhmire’—’
Tread carefully, I reminded myself.
No man is at his best in pain, and Carthage’s Bursa-hill had not been kind to the Egyptian’s body.
‘If I do take Carrasco, it will be to keep him safe from Videric. But I do think it would be better if he could live on Honorius’s estate–assuming he wants to. Onorata could still see him, then.’
Rekhmire’ snorted. ‘Don’t know why you don’t marry the damn prick!’
My temper went wherever tempers go.
‘Because, like so many people, it never appears to have occurred to him to ask me!’
Some of Jian’s crewmen jumped back, making a wide berth around the hatch-cover. Rekhmire’ sat upright, fingers motionless on his knee, staring at me with a wide-eyed shock.
He dropped his gaze and muttered sullenly, ‘It was the first thing I asked you–if you wanted a slave-contract to include bed.’
I would have said something, anything!, had I control of my wits or my mouth.
Evidently I had neither.
I stared at him.
Rekhmire’ returned to gazing at the backs of his hands. ‘You weren’t interested. As you told me.’
‘Not then. I thought it would be two freaks together because they had no other choice—’
He interrupted, his voice a squeak. ‘“Not then”?’
‘Ah—’
My turn to look away. I stared over the rail at the approaching coast of Gades.
‘Then again, I’ve been married twice this year…’
‘“Not then”!’ Rekhmire’ all but bellowed. ‘What do you mean, “not then”? When did it change? Did it change? Why didn’t you tell me!’
He glared at me, surprisingly ruffled and breathless for such a large man.
I said, ‘If I can put up with you when you’re sick in bed in Venice, I’ve probably seen all your worse qualities…’
Rekhmire’ looked thoroughly overthrown. ‘That discouraged you.’
‘I wasn’t even thinking, at that time—!’ I shook my head. ‘I’m just saying. You with a bad temper because you’re in pain. Nothing of it’s a surprise.’
Rekhmire’ lurched up, manhandling himself off the hatch-cover and striding to the port rail. He stared out at white spray. I watched the line of his back.
Without turning round, Rekhmire’ said, ‘The difference is that now I have to prove to Ty-ameny that I can do my job.’
I was appalled. ‘She’d dismiss you over this?’
He laughed, turning to face me, showing me a broad smile. ‘Sacred Eight, no! But if she thinks I’m having problems, she’ll have me back in Alexandria at a bureaucrat’s desk, before you can say “Royal Library”! She wants me safe. She’d make everything as comfortable for me as she could. But I…’
‘Want to be here, doing this,’ I completed.
I sat up, cross-legged; shifted again; and got up to walk to the rail beside him. For all the distraction, I couldn’t bite back the remaining words in my mind.
‘Yes, I’d noticed how close you and Ty-ameny are! She does know what you’re like after a month in one place?’
His eyes slitted. A little defensively, he said, ‘She’s like a sister. And furthermore, I would be perfectly capable of working at home in the city!’
‘Hope she doesn’t mind her crockery thrown at people’s heads…’
The Egyptian narrowed his eyes still further at me. ‘Pot. Kettle. Black!’
I would not have laughed if I could have prevented it. Unfortunately, that and his expression reduced me to breathlessness.
‘In any case,’ he said, a while after my recovery, ‘when I say I can offer you Ty-ameny’s patronage as a cousin–you may not be aware, precisely, of what it would involve for you.’
He put a stress on the last word that stopped me telling him, Yes, I understood the book-buyers’ trade thank you very much.
‘I mean it would be offered in respect of your particular talents. As with the Admiral’s ship at Alexandria harbour.’
Slowly, I said, ‘You mean Queen Ty-ameny is offering me the chance to…go somewhere and draw things?’
‘And paint them.’ Rekhmire’ raised a brow. ‘Many places.’
‘And be paid for this.’
‘It is a very modest amount of money—’
‘Sign me up!’ I bounced on the deck, feeling all of fourteen. ‘That’s just what I want to do!’
The Egyptian smiled. Not as brightly as I had expected. I caught a glimpse of something bitter-sweet in his expression.
I paused.
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘before I go wandering around on my own, I’d need some training?’
Rekhmire’ looked at me.
‘A mentor?’ I said. ‘Someone more experienced? Someone who, for example, has been doing this for a long—’
‘YES! I’ll do it!’
I grinned up at the panting book-buyer.
‘Did I say I was going to ask you? Maybe I should ask Ty-ameny to decide who she’d recommend—’
He had been reduced to speechlessness, I saw.
‘—since she threatened to pull my intestines out of my body,’ I added, ‘if I ever did anything to hurt you.’
Rekhmire’ stared at me.
‘What?’
‘When we were in the Library one time—’
‘The–interfering little brat!’
He was too far away, I decided. I took the few steps that crossed the distance between us, on uncertain legs, and stood at the rail by his side.
‘Actually…’ I surveyed the Gulf of Gades. ‘It was Ty-ameny who made me realise that I’d miss you, if you went off somewhere else.’
‘You would?’
Frightened as I was, I heard myself sound very definite. ‘Yes, I would.’
‘Oh.’ He sat back. ‘Good.’
‘Rekhmire’—’
‘Good. I suppose that in that case I can stop worrying that you’re going to notice I’ve been following you around for a year now!’
All the crew for fifteen feet around briefly turned to stare at the mad barbarian. Rekhmire’ gasped in a breath.
I watched his broad chest move.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘All year?’
‘I don’t know what gave Ty-ameny the idea that you’re in any way intelligent!’
‘No, nor do I.’
I gave way to a temptation of long standing, and leaned my shoulder up against his. His skin felt heated, soft. Prickling, like silk rubbed over amber.
He didn’t move away.
I shifted, pushing my way into the gap between his arm and his ribs.
Rekhmire’ beamed and put his arm around me.
‘Ilario!’
The voice spoke behind me without giving me any warning so I might move. I turned my head, looked down the deck, and found myself staring directly at Honorius.
Rekhmire’ did not so much as twitch beside me–because, I realised from peripheral vision, he appeared to be in a blind panic.
Honorius let out an explosive sigh.
‘Oh, thank God! It’s about damn time!’
I managed to turn my head back and look up at Rekhmire’.
He gazed down at me, lips moving a little, as if he would have formed words if he could.
The Captain-General of Taraconensis snorted and turned his back, stalking away down the deck of the war-junk.
His mutter was perfectly audible.
‘…Been expecting this since Rome…!’
We looked at each other.
Rekhmire’ gave me his gravest expression. ‘I suppose we’d better not disappoint him.’
I was too weak for laughter. I leaned against the warmth of his bare chest. He was not so much taller than I, and he smelled wonderful. ‘Only if it’s what you want. You know what I am.’
‘You know what I am. Some things are less–urgent for me than for other men.’ He moved his other arm, to enclose me, and I felt the weight as he leaned his smooth cheek against my temple. ‘I can’t give you children, either. But I can cherish the one you have.’
As long as we have her, I thought, melancholy in the midst of this happiness. What is valuable is always fragile.
The sea rocked us as we sat together on the hatch-cover, playing the game that lovers play of ‘when did you first notice?’, ‘when did you first feel…?’.
It was a long time before I moved, and then it was to get up and go to the ship’s rail. I shaded my eyes as the war-junk opened the harbour of Gades.
‘Something isn’t right.’
Rekhmire’ shoved himself to his feet and thumped across the deck to stand beside me.
The myriad other war-junks of Zheng He’s fleet kept station astern across the Gulf of Gades–impossibly large under the brilliant sun; impossibly and spikily graceful.
At least a dozen European and North African ships out of Carthage were, out of apparent sheer curiosity, attempting to keep up with us. Frankish cogs, Venetian galleys…The wooden rail jammed hard under my ribs as I leaned out, looking toward our stern.
A cog flying the colours of Genoa tacked across the war-junk’s wake, bowsprit jutting high out of the blue-grey waves–just as high as the top of our rudder. Their deck was a cliff’s depth below me.
Sounding unusually confused, Rekhmire’ murmured, ‘What ought I to see?’
I pointed at the departing Genoese ship–and the other vessels sailing towards us from the entrance to the harbour.
‘That isn’t right,’ I protested. ‘It doesn’t matter if they’ve heard rumours. This is Zheng He’s giant devil-ship in the flesh–and his fleet! Why isn’t Gades in a panic?’
15
‘There’s the answer.’ I balanced uneasily, a knee on the boat’s prow, and studied the quay of Gades ahead.
Under the banners, a group of men stood, evidently waiting to greet the Captain-General of Taraconensis. The tall man in Carthaginian robes would be the Governor. Beside him…
‘That’s Safrac de Aguilar.’ I sat back beside Honorius, avoiding falling by a fraction. ‘The man beside him is Videric.’
A muscle clenched at the hinge of Honorius’s jaw.
‘Is it so?’
He spent a moment adjusting his heavy sea-cloak over his demi-gown. With his temper bridled, he added, ‘The King told me to return by way of Gades, and as a courtesy inform the Governor that the Admiral’s ships have no ill intentions towards him–being our allies.’
The same method of wiping one’s enemy’s face in it as Rodrigo Sanguerra had ordered for Carthage, evidently.
‘Therefore,’ Honorius gritted, ‘I should very much like to know what Pirro Videric is doing here!’
Wind caught the banners, rolling them out on the wind. I recognised the Sanguerra colours, as well as Videric’s personal banner.
‘The King trusts de Aguilar, for what that’s worth.’
Honorius set his jaw and didn’t speak.
I clung to the boat’s side, wishing I might talk to Rekhmire’–who travelled with the other men in the second boat. Neither Honorius nor Orazi were willing to speculate. I concentrated, impatiently, on reaching the quay, and on not being sick.
Videric stepped forward out of the crowd as soon as Honorius finished his formal greetings to the Governor of Gades.
‘King Rodrigo was uncertain when you’d complete your business in Carthage. Whether it would be done before the Pharaoh-Queen’s subjects would be put ashore at Gades.’ Videric smiled, his fair hair and open expression making him appear very guileless. ‘The King sent me here in case you should miss the day.’
Of all the odd things I have seen in the last twelve months, my stepfather Videric walking amiably beside my natural father Honorius, towards the Governor of Gades’ palace, must be the most remarkable of all.
‘I see where you get your glass-throwing habits from,’ the book-buyer remarked.
I winced at a crash from the opulent chambers the Governor had provided for Captain-General Honorius.
Tottola, idly leaning up against the archway, grinned and pulled the curtain aside for me to pass through.
Honorius halted, halfway through pulling off the fur-trimmed demi-gown, and fixed me with a glare. ‘Your stepfather!’
He threw his boot at my head.
I caught it neatly, since there had been no real force behind it, and returned it to him with a grin. ‘I’ve had masters who threw so much harder and better than that…’
It evidently defused the remains of his bad temper. He ruffled my hair, reducing it to a haystack.
‘I wish you’d gone through none of that.’ He perked up. ‘But are you sure you wouldn’t like to see your stepfather challenged to a duel? I’m sure Rodrigo-damned-Sanguerra doesn’t need his First Minister that badly…’
‘Court politics.’ I shrugged. ‘Videric gets the glory of telling the Lord-Amir here in charge of Gades that no, he needn’t worry, the devil-ships are just passing allies of Taraconensis…’
‘I had Carthage. I suppose I can forgive him stealing Gades out from under me!’
Honorius’s buoyant mood returned too readily for a man who would play court politics seriously. But then, I thought, he’d likely rather be back on his estate, waiting for his mares to foal.
‘And another damn banquet tonight,’ Honorius added, yanking at the strings of his shirt. ‘I imagine I’ll stay several days. Ilario, have you decided where you’ll go from here?’
My face may have been a little hot as I glanced at the Egyptian. ‘We hav
en’t had time to discuss it, really…’
My father has very eloquent eyebrows, when he chooses.
I sighed. ‘I suppose I ought to stay out of the way of the banquet, since you’re there. How I suffer…’
‘How I suffer,’ Honorius snorted.
Voices at the arched doorway interrupted him. I turned, as he did, to find the German man-at-arms escorting a well-dressed Iberian into the Captain-General’s room.
The Lord Pirro Videric gave me a tight smile.
‘Lord Honorius. Ilario–I saw you at the dock. This may be unwise. I know you are only exiled from Taraconensis. But would it not be wiser if you left Iberia altogether?’
I was close enough to tread heavily on Honorius’s foot.
‘The First Minister is only looking out for King Rodrigo’s interests.’ I held Videric’s pale gaze. ‘And of course, he’s correct. Aldra Videric, Gades is a seaport. I’ll be gone by tomorrow.’
Rekhmire’ made his excuses to leave the banquet early, and joined me in my room while I ate what I had managed to talk the kitchen staff out of.
‘You eat better than I do.’ He picked an olive off my plate. ‘And your temper has certainly improved.’
I ignored that provoking compliment. ‘I would have preferred to leave Gades by land…The Via Augusta starts here. Or ends here. Depending on your perspective.’
I doubted I could rely on Zheng He’s fleet to transport me, now Sebekhotep and Rekhmire’ had come ashore. An attempt to bribe Commander Jian with two charcoal studies, one of him in profile and one full-face, had only resulted in him cheerfully remarking, ‘Keeps the demons away!’ as he brandished the papers.
Or at least, I think he said that. My acquaintance with the languages of Chin is still spotty.
Rekhmire’ took a seat at the window, gazing out over the city of Gades. ‘The Via Augusta? You’d need no ship at all. You could walk all the way back across Iberia to Taraco, to Marseilles, to Genoa, to Italy…’
I saved him a last olive on my dish. ‘What, am I not even allowed a mule to ride?’
‘You have enough donkeys with you as it is.’
I couldn’t help a smile. ‘Oh, cruel!’
‘Perhaps I’m wrong.’ The Egyptian mimicked thought. ‘Lord Honorius’s men are quick-witted, for soldiers. Perhaps it’s only the lawyer—’