Ilario, the Stone Golem (24 page)

walk again without this help.’

117

7

I
am
lost
on
this
ship!
I realised.

I signalled to one of Menmet-Ra’s linen-kilted servants, requesting

briskly that he take us to our cabin. Rekhmire’ stomped in my wake. I

said nothing while any man was within earshot.

The cabin’s thick wooden door closed. The noise of running feet, men

casting off ropes, and creaking oars drowned out anything a listener

might have overheard.

‘
Why
didn’t
you
tell
me?
’

Rekhmire’ blinked at me in his most feline manner.

‘What should I have said? That I’ll be lame?’ His expression altered

significantly. ‘Does it concern you that I won’t be able to act in defence

of you, or Onorata?’

Frustration and some nameless emotion stifled any reply I might have

formed.

A brisk knock sounded on the cabin door. Onorata jolted and began to

grizzle.
Hunger
, I thought, although it might have been wind or heat. She

did not feel wet enough to change.

‘Come!’

At my summons, Attila walked in with a straw palliasse over his

shoulder. He threw it down inside the door.

‘One of us will be awake at all times,’ he said brusquely. ‘The other

one will sleep across your door. We know you’re the Lion’s
son
-

daughter—’ He emphasised the first term. ‘—but we’ve got orders to

keep you safe.’

His eyes were a remarkable pale blue, this Germanic mercenary, and

he could not stand in this galley cabin without bending his head. I

wondered at the change between Venice and his attitude here on ship. A

matter of sole responsibility, perhaps, now there is only him and his

brother?

‘I’ll agree to any defence, within reason. Consult with me first.’ I

waited until the tall German nodded. ‘Do we have Carrasco?’

‘In the hold, in chains, until you want him.’

Conscience might have pricked me. But I think Ramiro Carrasco quite

capable of jumping into the S. Marco basin, as volatile as he seems

now.

This cabin would belong to some junior officer, I guessed. For all my

118

own protests, Rekhmire’’s influence with Menmet-Ra had gained it; and

you might sleep six men in it, if four of them lay head-to-toe on the floor,

leaving the wooden box-beds for two others.

The Egyptian swung himself over to the far bed and sat down,

wedging the crutch in a niche between bed and deck.

I
do
not
know
what
to
say
to
you.
Except
that,
without
me,
you
would
not
be
injured.

Cherry-flower might be over-ripe and dropping from saplings hardy

enough to root in the Adriatic ports we visited, and the day warm enough

to go without a cloak at midday, but spring is still a dangerous season for

travel.

I saw little enough of the ports myself, and little enough of the

Pharaoh-Queen’s trireme. One instance of being shown the higher stern

cabins above me, where the captain bunked, and the helmsman followed

the track of the lodestone in its binnacle, was interrupted by a frantic

summons to feed Onorata, since she had apparently decided to take the

pottery bottle from no hand but mine.

I likewise had little enough time to admire the breath-taking regularity

of the sweeps, the oarsman not standing at their benches as the

Venetians do, but sitting by threes, and drawing the long oars when the

lateen sails were not sufficient, or we had spent too many hours tacking.

There were arbalests set at weapons ports between every bench. And at

the prow, where a Venetian war-galley would have the iron beak that

served as a ram, I saw a sparkle of sun on bronze.

Herr Gutenberg came back with tar marking every item of clothing he

owned, raving about a siphon and dragon’s-head spout that would shoot

Greek Fire at any enemy of Alexandria. I fell asleep upright on my bunk

listening to him.

‘Three month colic,’ Attila muttered, when he woke bleary-eyed

before his shift guarding the cabin door was due, and looked with some

dislike at my child.

I sat with her face-down over my lap, rubbing at her back, in the hope

that her wide-mouthed screaming might stem from a frustrated desire to

fart.

I was appalled. ‘It lasts three months?’

‘It usually ends when they’re three months old.’ He dug a dirty fist into

his eye as if he would grind it out of the socket, and yawned. ‘Usually.’

That there was another part of the ship, I didn’t realise until I

wondered just where Rekhmire’ had stowed Ramiro Carrasco.

Brief inquiry gained me the knowledge that, below the rower’s benches

and the line of cargo between them (on which the officers walked up and

down to supervise), there was another hold. This took cargo or pilgrims,

a man from Dalmatia on his way south informed me, and showed me

down the steps to the galley’s dark interior. They likewise had no light

119

except what came in the hatches – but this hold ran the length of the ship

from stem to stern, running off into darkness either side of me; pilgrims

and other passengers sleeping with their heads to the hull and their feet

to the middle, where their luggage lay as a central barrier.

White sand ballast filled the ship to the level of this deck, as the

Dalmatian showed me when he took up a plank and unearthed his bottle

of wine and his eggs, which he had stored there to keep cool.

The stench of the bilges, combined with the idea of food, sent me

rapidly up to daylight before I had a chance to look for Carrasco.

If
not
for
Honorius,
I
would
be
travelling
there.
I
doubt
Onorata
would
survive
it.

In the cabin, Onorata was screaming again.

I put her into the sling and took her up on deck.

The buckram and linen sling encompassed Onorata, supporting her

body and head, although I kept my arm under her until I should grow

used to it. I brought my cloak around her, to shield her from the ripe

brisk wind blowing from the pine headlands of the coast. Her tiny

screwed-up features showed dwarfed in her fur-lined hood. I wriggled

my finger in to touch her neck, and judged her neither too warm nor too

cold.

Rekhmire’ stomped to stand beside me at the ship’s rail, in that open

middle area around the mainmast that they call ‘the market-place of the

galley’. The crutch’s ferrule scraped on the deck. He cocked an

interrogative brow at the sling.

‘Well thought of,’ he approved.

‘Ramiro Carrasco made it for me,’ I said, taking the opportunity for

truth.

The Egyptian scowled.

‘It’s perfectly harmless!’ I protested. ‘Safe. One of the things you learn

in a large family, it appears.’

‘If he were not a necessary shield to you—’ Rekhmire’ broke off, took a

visible effort to collect himself, and gave it up. ‘Have you lost your mind?

Taking help from him? The man tried to murder you!’

His words brought the memory of Ramiro Carrasco in prison sharply

to my mind’s eye. ‘
I
came nearer to killing him. I cracked his skull.’

Rekhmire’ snorted.

‘Besides which,’ I added, ‘you need not either trust nor like him, but –

I
need
a
servant!
And since he had to come with us, it might as well be Messer Carrasco.’

‘Plain Carrasco the slave!’ Rekhmire’ corrected with a snort.

He stomped off down the deck before I could add more.

This
voyage
would
be
infinitely
easier
if
those
two
men
co-operated
.

Watching Rekhmire’s rigid back, I thought,
It
won’t
happen
.

‘Say what you like!’ Exhaustion made me stubborn. ‘I haven’t slept in

120

twenty hours –
again!
– and you neither. Attila has to be on guard and Tottola asleep. There is no one else!’

‘You’d trust Carrasco with your
child
?’

The note in Rekhmire’’s voice was far closer to pique than to concern,

I thought.

His heavy lids hooded his eyes. Had things been right between us, he

would have made some joke regarding the necessity of strangling the

bawling brat in any case.

‘I don’t
care
how trustworthy he is!’ I raised my voice over Onorata’s roaring. ‘I have to sleep!’

The same went for Attila – curled up on his pallet, all of his clothing

and blankets pulled over his head and wrapped about his ears – and for

Rekhmire’ himself. Spattered ink showed his failure to compose report-

scrolls away up on the deck in a brisk wind. The cabin seemed full of

something tangible, as if you could touch Onorata’s hopeless wailing.

Blue patches marked Rekhmire’’s eyes that were nothing to do with

kohl. ‘You
trust
that—’

Evidently an epithet escaped him.

‘“Spy”?’ I suggested sweetly.

‘“Would-be murderer”!’ Rekhmire’ snapped.

‘I just want him to sit here for an hour and watch her! Then I’ll walk

her on the deck again.’ I thought my muscles might easily recover from

their weakness after the Caesarean, given the amount of exercise I gained

walking and crooning to the baby. ‘I don’t believe he’d hurt her.’

Rekhmire’ threw down a stoppered ink-horn. ‘You
cannot
propose to

put your child into that man’s care!’

He said considerably more, but tiredness blurred the edges of it. At

this moment, I thought,
I
am a greater danger. If I sleep now, I’ll roll over and suffocate the child; at least if Ramiro Carrasco has her for an hour,

I’ll be less exhausted.

‘Besides,’ I added, ‘Tottola can watch him for an hour, instead of the

door.’

I sent Attila to unchain Videric’s spy and my slave.

Ramiro Carrasco had not benefited from his week in the hold, I saw,

with those Alexandrine slaves not involved in rowing or sailing the

trireme. He stumbled into the cabin half-awake and fearful, hair in

spikes.

‘You’re looking after Onorata,’ I said bluntly. ‘Nurse her. Feed her if

she carries on crying. You know how to do that?’

‘Yes.’ He looked stunned.

I did not dare not stand up to pass her over, dizzy as I felt. Carrasco

squatted, not meeting my eye, gently taking Onorata from my arms into

his.

I strung words together. ‘If she sleeps, and Attila’s awake by the next

121

ship’s bell, get him to help you make her feed. Wake me if anything is

wrong, or if you even
think
there is. Understand?’

Carrasco didn’t rise. He unwittingly echoed Rekhmire’, in a hoarse

whisper. ‘You’d trust me with your child?’

‘If I thought you were a man even
capable
of harming my child . . . I would have sent a lying message to Videric, telling him I’d bought you,’ I

said. ‘And I would have paid the Venetian jailer to cut your carotid artery

while I stood and watched, to make sure.’

There was no threat in what I said. What threat could ensure the safety

of Onorata? I saw him take in the reality of the situation, however, before

I lay down and wrapped my cloak over my ears, and sleep came over me

as black and dark as the sea beneath the galley’s hull.

Before the
Sekhmet
, I would have thought it only possible to fear storms,

sea-thieves, clouds that obscure the stars, and pestilence-banners flying

from harbours we desired to put in to, for just so long.

Had I been travelling alone, this might have been the case.

As it was, I fretted from the Adriatic to the Aegean, week on week, and

I missed the company of the book-buyer.

If Rekhmire’ was much absent in conversation with the captain – a

man originally from Rhodes, or Cyprus, or some such island – Tottola

and Attila attended to their guard duty with considerably more

attentiveness than when they had comrades to take responsibility from

their shoulders. One always slept, one always woke; and they assumed a

demeanour that made Menmet-Ra’s returning slaves (when I could

strike up a conversation) regard them as the worst kind of cannibal