Ilario, the Stone Golem (25 page)

Franks.

The Master of Mainz never slept, or not in our cabin. I felt no

inclination to blame him:
I
would have slept elsewhere if I could.

Gutenberg busied himself with every aspect of the trireme he could

investigate, from the Greek Fire weapon at the prow to the
bussola

nautica
that indicates the position of the magnetic poles. I changed Onorata’s shit-rags.

Onorata bawled.

Ramiro Carrasco sung her a lullaby that, after final frustrated inquiry,

I discovered to be only the rose of the compass sung to a tune of his own

devising.
Tramontana,
Griego,
Levante,
Sirocho
, and so on to include all eight winds.

If it had not granted me sleep, I would have resented my daughter for

attending more to the man who would have killed her than to her

mother-father.

‘“Ostro, Garbin, Ponente, Maistro” . . . ’ Since she appeared soothed

by only that lullaby, I learned the song by default.

Being in constant attendance on the child, I found myself taken for a

woman, for all I dressed in hose. Attila pointed out that I might be a

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woman dressed in male clothing for travelling, as many do. That gave

me pause to think of where I was going. If I had been on better terms

with Rekhmire’, I might have asked to borrow Alexandrine clothing.

For all I had been thinking of it league after league, the arrival at

Constantinople nonetheless took me by surprise.

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8

Harsh light blazed up off the water, and the land to either side.

‘I dreamed of bears last night.’ I blinked, surprised to hear myself

sound morose.

Tottola glanced down from where he leaned on the ship’s rail, at my

right hand. ‘That only counts if you dream
before
you embark.’

Attila’s massive elbows came to rest on the sun-baked wooden rail at

my other side. He murmured, ‘Just don’t sneeze, now . . . ’

I managed a sneer at him, for his superstition, as well as I might for the

jumping frogs of nervousness in my guts.

Other than leaving Rome – when I had other matters in my mind – I

always observe the politenesses of travel that I was taught along with

court behaviour. Step on board a ship with the right foot, never with the

left. Avoid sneezing or coughing as one comes on board. Sailors have

been known to tip a supposed bad-luck passenger overboard before now.

But they’re only ancient delusions: certainly I wouldn’t go so far as to

delay a voyage if I dreamed of bears or boars or any other Heraldic beast

on the night before sailing.

‘Besides,’ I said aloud. ‘That’s the harbour: we’re here now. If we sink,

I’m sure somebody can fish us out . . . ’

‘Assuming they’d bother,’ Rekhmire’’s voice remarked, more amiably

than he had for some weeks. He directed a shame-faced smile in my

direction. ‘Are you certain you wish to associate with us so closely?’

He claimed this land to be no further south than Taraconensis, merely

much further east. I, having sweated the more as the ship sailed south

past each Greek island, doubted him. Confronting him a week ago, I had

borrowed what garments of an Alexandrine bureaucrat might fit me.

‘I look like one of your people,’ I said mildly, hitching at the wrap-

around linen kilt that I wore. Over it I’d belted a sleeved robe – made from a single thickness of linen fabric, light enough to bear the heat of the morning but enough to keep my skin from burning.

And enough to hide my bare chest.

Rekhmire’ didn’t need to hide his. He had his braided cloth and reed

headband tied around his forehead, this time over a voluminous hood or

veil of flax linen, which held it so that his shaven head and his neck were

protected against the sun.

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‘Pireaus and the last three Greek ports, they took me for an

Alexandrine eunuch,’ I added, smugly.

‘That,’ he observed, ‘is why no one will bother to fish you out of the

harbour. Far too many of us here as it is. Place is swarming.’

I failed to stifle a snicker. And thought myself regrettably comfortable

in his company, for a man with whom I had not settled a quarrel. If we

had
quarrelled. And if I was certain over what.

Ramiro Carrasco shot me a puzzled look, standing holding Onorata

among the baby’s luggage. Which, if you leave out of the calculation any

sketchbooks I may have brought on the voyage, or any Greek scrolls that

found their way into Rekhmire’’s hands, was the largest single amount of

baggage in our expedition.

The crop-haired Herr ‘Mainz’ strolled past Carrasco, his gaze going

between me and Rekhmire’. ‘This. This is Constantinople?’

Rekhmire’ murmured a phrase in Alexandrine Greek, and then added,

‘Franks still call it that. We call it the cities of the Pharaohs of exile. Or

New Alexandria, if that’s easier for you, Master Johannes.’

The German guild-man nodded absently, his gaze still fixed on

rocking water, packed hulls and bare masts, and the massive and

monumental stone walls of the city.

I thought, I have seen nothing like it since Carthage, and Carthage’s

walls are no longer seen in daylight!

My hands itched to be at chalk and paper.

Rekhmire’ was still talking to the German. ‘How would you prefer to

be introduced to the Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny? As Master Mainz?’

‘It may be best.’ The German didn’t shift his gaze from the bright

waters. ‘The Guild in Mainz dismissed many of us when they threw out

the patricians. If your Pharaoh-Queen will not think it odd?’

The German is as nervous as I, I realised.

Thoughts of Videric, deliberately pushed into the background all this

month we sailed south, intruded back into my mind. Between that and

the vista rising from the water beyond the
Sekhmet
’s prow – great walls decorated with painted bands and enamel, the ochre-coloured domes,

the temples and the obelisks lining the skyline – I felt amazingly small.

And I have essentially come here – to ask for help.

I must be mad.

That thought was purely honest.

No one here will have any reason to help me, no matter what I can

testify about the Empty Chair and Masaccio’s death.

And here I may see again the thing that murdered him.

My fingers shook, cold despite the heat. I thrust one hand up each

opposite sleeve, folding my arms, and leaned on the rail again. One of

Menmet-Ra’s slaves, by name Asru, giggled in a high-pitched voice, and

I glanced aside from the magnificence of Alexandria to see her flirting

unsubtly with Attila. She had one of her hands clasping at his arm, trying

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to run her fingers through the thick fair hair that, unbound, fell to his waist.

Beyond her, Ramiro Carrasco de Luis, with the baby’s baggage piled

up in a mountain about his knees, cradled Onorata up against his

shoulder. His hand, huge against her tiny cloth-wrapped body, rubbed at

her shoulder-blades with two fingers. In an undertone, he murmured,

‘There we go . . . ’

Onorata’s face screwed up. She jerked, and made a sound like a kitten

sneezing.

A gobbet of something white and half-digested hit Carrasco’s neck and

doublet-collar about equally.

The baby’s unfocused blue eyes returned to gazing out at sunlight

fracturing off the water. The assassin, still supporting her by one hand

and the sling, scooped at his neck with his fingers, dragging the mess out

from between his linen doublet and his steel collar. He wiped his hand

down his hose. I heard him heave a half-exasperated and half-satisfied

sigh as I got to within a pace of him, and he placidly went back to

stroking Onorata’s shoulders, humming under his breath.

‘Where did
you
learn to do that?’ I demanded, since it was in no way

the way I burped her.

He leaped as if I’d stuck a sword point in him. My daughter began to

howl. Tottola and Attila put hands to weapons as one – assessed the

situation instantly – and took an automatic pace away across the ship’s

desk. Away from a disturbed baby.

Red-faced, I muttered, ‘Shit . . . ’

‘She’s done that. I changed her.’

I glared.

Between distracting her and petting her, Carrasco and I persuaded

Onorata that she desired to sleep more than she desired to scream like

the fabled steam-ball of the Alexandrine philosopher Heron. I found it

difficult to be soothing when I wished to strangle the man beside me.

I shot him a glance, and met harassed dark eyes. And snorted. ‘Maybe

I should light another candle to Rekhmire’’s Hermopolitan Ogdoad. It

seems to work.’

‘Or it was colic, and now she’s older . . . ’ He rocked her a little, in her

linen wrappings. She settled curled up onto his breast, nosing momen-

tarily for something she would not get from him.

Or
from
me
. I was momentarily bleak.

‘Amazing,’ Rekhmire’ remarked, at my shoulder, ‘how “wet-nurse”

comes in the list of required talents for an assassin.’

The dark-haired Iberian immediately lowered his gaze.

He’s picked up some slave habits, I realised. Among which is the

necessity of hiding your thoughts from your owner.

‘Give her to me.’

The solid, warm bundle in my hands felt so breakable that, even with

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the sling, and Onorata tucked into the crook of my arm and with my

other hand supporting her head, I couldn’t convince myself that she was

safe in my arms.

Ramiro Carrasco muttered something, and I looked up and raised a

prompting brow.

He moved his shoulders under the patched doublet. His iron collar

gleamed dully in the sunlight. ‘Like I said, I’m the next-to-eldest in my

family. I used to have to look after the young ones a lot, before the priest

took me off to teach me my letters.’

Anger stung me. I have not paid enough attention to this before – or, I

have, but the necessity of having more than one set of hands to look after

Onorata made me wilfully ignore it. ‘How long do you think I’m going to

have an assassin near my baby?’

Ramiro Carrasco de Luis blushed like the schoolboy he would have

been when his local priest singled him out as worth teaching his letters.

‘You can kill me. Torture me.’ He looked down at his dirty bare feet.

‘Without needing to think whether anyone will ask why. They won’t.

Under these circumstances, do you think I’d take a step out of line?’

I thought him a long way from the sharply-dressed secretary who’d

waited on Aldra Federico and Sunilda. The sun had bleached his

doublet, and the foot-less Frankish hose. He went bare-headed as slaves

do, his hair growing out short and shaggy. The labour the captain had

also co-opted him into on the
Sekhmet
had hardened his muscles, as well

as his palms and the soles of his feet.

I waited until he looked up, rubbing my thumb in small circles on

Onorata’s chest since she seemed to like the rhythm. ‘I’ve known slaves

who decided they had nothing to lose. Who felt it didn’t matter if they

were tortured to death, so long as they had that one strike back at the master they hated. You might wait your moment, and drop my baby

over the side of the ship. Or just pinch her nostrils together. After all, it

isn’t a season yet since you tried to kill me.’

Shame made me hot even as I spoke.

This
is
gratuitous
cruelty
. Since I am ashamed of having not been sufficient for my child. Ashamed of trusting Carrasco out of sheer

convenience.

Onorata stirred, whimpered at tension she must feel through my arms

and chest. She reached out with one wavering starfish-hand.

With the automatic reaction that meant this must have happened a

hundred times before, Ramiro Carrasco absently reached down and put

his forefinger close to the baby now cradled in another’s arms.

Onorata’s hand closed around his finger, lifted her head a little as she

pulled it to her mouth, and lay back mumbling his nail as she subsided

into dreamless squirming.

‘She’s advanced,’ Ramiro murmured absently, ‘for three months. She