Ilario, the Stone Golem (35 page)

littered the area – and would do until more of Ty-ameny’s bureaucrats

came to remove them for study. ‘Remember your family is building up a

debt. The Queen owes you much.’

I may have looked irritated.

Rekhmire’ sounded faintly apologetic. ‘You were in King Rodrigo

Sanguerra’s court: I need not tell you any of this. When the moment

comes, then you ask.’

‘
What
do I ask for? “Would Constantinople like to step in and sort out

the court of Taraco?” No! Would King Rodrigo like that? Frankly—’ I

bit my lip as Onorata grumbled in her sleep, and added, much more

quietly, ‘Frankly,
no
! And it would be a direct provocation to Carthage.’

Rekhmire’ nodded, and ground the heel of one large hand against his

eye and socket.

He surveyed the resulting smudge of kohl on his skin with disapproba-

tion.

‘First things first. You may come to the next council,’ he added, not

very much as though it were a suggestion.

‘How long before Queen Ty-ameny deals with the Admiral and his

ship?’

I did not add,
And
can
listen
to
pleas
for
help
from
book-buyers’
assistants?

since the renewed accord between Rekhmire’ and I seemed to make that

redundant.

‘A week or so. Certainly before the end of this lunar month.’

171

15

The smell hung heavy in the air, rich in the back of my throat where I couldn’t choke it away.

It was a hot climate, for all the stone walls about us. Necessity put us

on the Library’s upper floors, to get the natural light. But that made this

hotter than the earth-insulated cellars.

‘Shall I turn that over for you?’ The philosopher Bakennefi nodded

down.

It is hardly the first dead body I’ve seen.

Not even the first body cut to pieces. I once managed to attend a

public dissection in the university at Barcelona, along with two hundred

other students, in the hopes of discovering what those lumps and bumps

one sees while drawing the human body actually are, under the skin –

and what they look like when there is no such surface.

Perhaps, I thought, it’s that this small old man was obviously a slave.

Masaccio said that in the same way one can’t draw robes without

knowledge of the body underneath, it’s not possible to draw skin without

knowledge of muscle, tendon, ligament, bones.

‘Yes: turn him.’ I managed to get the words out without bringing up

the bile at the back of my throat.

Bakennefi carefully turned over the dead man’s skinned hand.

I set about drawing the uncovered tendons and muscles of the palm.

This Bakennefi was Bakennefi Aa, ‘eldest’, out of the three brother

Royal Mathematicians who ran this department, along with Bakennefi

Hery-ib (‘he who is in the middle’) and Bakennefi Nedjes (‘small’). He

had a watercolour of the autopsy in progress on the vast stone slab beside

him. He painted it as delicately as if the dead body were a book opened

for his enjoyment. There seemed to me to be little connection between

the carefully-labelled bright organs and the slithery mass in the opened

belly. But that may have been because I deliberately avoided looking

closely.

I swatted at one of the ever-present flies.

The hum of the swarm was loud enough that a man had actually to

raise his voice to be heard, despite the twenty or so slaves with fans

waving the air above the stone slab clear.

Bakennefi Aa gave a last prod at the opened palm with his iron-hafted

172

pen. ‘Do you know, I think this one’s done with? He’s a little more past

his time than I imagined.’

Sheer cowardice made me turn away and set about putting brushes,

reeds, scrapers and paints away with my chalk in the leather snapsack. If

I had to hear the sounds of the cloth being wrapped around the

dissection body, and smell the sudden wash of stink as slaves lifted it, at

least I need not look.

And the worst thing is that these drawings will be invaluable to me.

‘You are good.’ Queen Ty-ameny’s light voice spoke behind me. I

startled hard enough to drop a brush.

‘I wonder you don’t ask me for a commission,’ she added.

Scrabbling hurriedly on the Library’s marble floor, I stood up again,

clutching the brush, flushed. Ty-ameny was standing on her toes looking

at my painting. She glanced at me for an answer to her implied question.

‘Why not?’ She wore a simple linen tunic edged with purple, and her

black eyes looked brightly at me. ‘Why wouldn’t you ask? I might agree.’

I stuttered, ‘I grew up in a court, Aldro.’

No matter how small and provincial it might have been.

‘There are always factions in a court,’ I added, packing the brush away

in its wooden box, and slipping that into my bag. ‘Aldro Ty-amenhotep,

I’ve been used to being next to a King, most of my adult life. Not that I

had any power in Taraco. But even a Fool who has the King’s ear gets

courted.’

‘Perhaps even more so.’ Ty-ameny grinned, and tilted her head up,

watching me. As if it were a familiar story, she murmured, ‘Pay attention

to any one man, and before you know it, you’re on one side, and there

are other sides, all of whom have reason to hate you. And whoever you

listened to first, they don’t trust you. I wondered,’ she added, ‘why

you’ve stood so much in my cousin’s shadow while you were here.’

I couldn’t help a smile in response to hers. Rekhmire’ wasn’t liable to

give his loyalty to a stupid ruler.

‘I’m too used to being a King’s—’
pet
. I chose a better word. ‘—associate. Kings don’t awe me. That’s sometimes unfortunate. Other lords have found me disrespectful in the past, because of what I’m used

to. And any court faction you like to mention thinks I can be bribed or

threatened. I find it better to stay in the background, where I can’t give

offence.’

The buzz of flies diminished, most of them giving up now and circling

to find the open stone windows. Two slaves remained, waving fans made

out of huge white feathers, and concealing the kind of relieved boredom

that comes with not being ordered to any dirty or difficult task.

Ty-ameny walked over to the window, her thin arms folded across her

chest. Gold bracelets flashed back points of light that left dots across my

vision. She gazed out at the blue sky – at the sun she gravitated towards, I

suddenly realised, at any moment she might.

173

‘Divine Father Ra!’ she muttered, either in prayer or exasperation.

‘Ilario . . . You’ve done good work for me with Zheng He. As one of my

court painters, here, you could afford to keep your daughter.’

Having occasionally had an oak door slammed in my face, I recognise

that feeling of shock. Even if this is from a door opening.

‘But . . . Master Rekhmire’ will have told you my business in Iberia.’

‘In broad detail.’ The Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny rested her elbows on

the stone sill.

The spreading gardens below had the air of something Roman. A

stone maze beyond a hedge looked darker, a mass of obelisks and

pyramids that I thought must be monuments or graves. Momentarily I

pictured the ancient junipers growing in the dark, in Carthage’s tophet.

If I painted Baal’s face now, could I get it right? Now there’s Onorata?

Ty-ameny shifted herself around, looking a considerable way up to see

my face. Under that study, I reached out to the silver basin on the sill, water warmed by the sun, and began to wash blood and paint from my

hands.

The Pharaoh-Queen said, ‘And what are your intentions towards

Rekhmire’?’

A slave thrust a towel into my hands and I dropped it.

What?

The slave passed me another cloth. Mute through bewilderment, I

dried my hands and returned it. Not that the droplets wouldn’t have

been sucked up by the sun in a few minutes.

‘Intentions?’ I forced myself to calmness. ‘To help him wherever I can,

Highness.’

She put her hand up on my forearm. Her fingers were as small as a

twelve-year-old girl’s, and her palm sandy and hot.

‘It would displease me personally if Rekhmire’ were deliberately hurt.’

Bakennefi had also examined me, at Ahhotep’s request; both of them

had found something to criticise and cluck over in the stitches removed

from my lower belly. I will always bear the marks. Now I thought I heard

Honorius and Rekhmire’’s voices spontaneously chiming together:
Save

the
mother
.

Ty-ameny’s clear small voice said, ‘Suppose his duties take him to a

different land, now? Suppose he were to leave Alexandria tomorrow?

With the foreign ship?’

There was a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach, keen enough to make

me wonder if Alexandrine food might not be suited to it.

Mouth dry, I thought,
Interesting
–
I
would
sooner
he
didn’t
leave
.

Rekhmire’ no longer owns me as a slave. He brought me to Alexandria

because he needed to come here himself. Yes, he will help solve the

problem of Aldra Videric, but – not, perhaps, personally.

I must look bewildered and stupid, I realised, but I could find no

words for this realisation I would have preferred to avoid.

174

The Pharaoh-Queen studied me with a sparrow-like tilt to her head. I

thought it an even throw of the dice whether she would accept my

silence, or have one of the sandal-hurling outbursts of temper that Egypt

seems to permit its female rulers.

‘Great Queen.’ I wiped my hand over my face. Spots of colour told me

I had missed spatters; I doused my fingers in the bowl and wiped water

over my skin again. ‘I . . . would still wish to help him.’

She gave a decided nod.

‘We should talk of the future.’ Her features a mask of distaste, she

raised her free hand a fraction. ‘Elsewhere.’

The nearest slave crossed the room instantly and bowed, giving her a

scented cloth. I avoided the slave’s eye. Even with the stone surface

sluiced down, the stink of the dead slave still hung in this room. If this slave dies of age or sickness here, will he end up opened on a stone table?

‘Bakennefi Aa wouldn’t mind a look under
my
skin,’ I said before I knew I was to be quite so honest.

Queen Ty-ameny frowned at me over her silk kerchief.

‘I do hope you’re careful about taking food and drink around him . . . ’

Rekhmire’ entered the chamber just as Queen Ty-ameny of the Five

Great Names doubled up, giggling like a schoolgirl.

I folded my arms.

At Rekhmire’’s raised brow, Ty-ameny pointed at me, waved a hand

weakly in dismissal of the matter, and shot me a glance with more

genuine apology than I have ever had from King Rodrigo.

‘It’s hardly fair,’ she murmured. ‘I’m Alexandria’s queen; how much

free interchange can there be between a queen and any other man or

woman?’

Before I thought, I said, ‘That’s what I tell my slave.’

Rekhmire’’s rumbled louder comment drowned me out. ‘That’s why I

freed Ilario, cousin.’

The tiny woman smiled wryly. ‘Well, no man is going to free me from

the throne. And I don’t think I would let them. Very well: we need to

talk. The matter of Zheng He must be settled soon – before there is more

trouble from Carthage.’

175

16

Pharaoh-Queen Ty-ameny of the Five Great Names sat small and erect,

among cushions embroidered in blue and gold with her lineal ancestor

Ra the Sun-God of Old Egypt.

The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, at last on shore, sat on her right-hand

side, on the ochre marble ledge of the sunken area of her Council

chamber, Jian beside him. Rekhmire’ was next to Ty-ameny, then I on

Rekhmire’’s left hand, with half the eunuch bureaucracy beyond me.

Zheng He’s other officers and Alexandria’s sea-captains and army-

generals, at the end of the great chamber, shared space with Ty-ameny’s

natural philosophers and Royal Mathematicians, who kept papers and

instruments and charts beside them on the low seat.

The Alexandrines might be old, young, fat, thin, eunuch, or –

occasionally – intact male. What they all had in common was an intensity