Ilario, the Stone Golem (41 page)

gunnels. I suspected they had not expected their commander to be told

that. Or not by any man who’d get to keep his head afterwards.

‘Perhaps I’m not a very good artist,’ I said apologetically, and had the

idea then of offering Jian paper and chalk of his own.

We passed an hour or two exchanging what we could of technique,

hampered by lack of language. Jian’s war-junk was mostly a matter of

lines, but it was recognisably a war-junk; the fact that he put in islands we had passed above and below the ship, so that he seemed to be

drawing everything on one long ribbon, I couldn’t talk him out of.

Pulling a small version of Leon Battista’s perspective frame out of the

snapsack, I attempted to show him how it related to what I was drawing

on my paper – but I think neither of us understood my explanation.

With the sun descending into my eyes, I settled for adding in a quick

sketch of a European cog to give me the scale of the war-junk. There was

not, in truth, so much difference between the high poop of a Frankish

ship and the curves of the junk’s flat stern.

Only in sheer size.

As for how many ship-lengths the war-junk was long . . .

203

‘If it’s an inch less than four hundred feet, I’ll boil my sandals and eat

them!’

Jian looked bemused at my mutter. I was saved from explanation. A

faint whooshing noise and a
pop!
was succeeded by a light falling down

the sky – one of Zheng He’s signal rockets, barely bright enough to show

in daylight, but clear enough that Jian gave a grunting sigh and ordered

his rowers to their oars.

I had seen much larger rockets in the war-junk’s hold. I guessed them

launched from some of the arbalest-like machines and tubes on the

foredecks. How effective they might be in a sea battle, Ty-ameny’s pilot

Sebekhotep said he could have no professional opinion on.

But I saw he took note of them all the same.

Jian’s crew brought the boat towards what seemed a vast wooden wall,

when we got up close, rather than the side of a sea-going ship. I spent time in several languages making it known that if a stupid barbarian used

insulting words, it would only be out of ignorance, and no reflection on

the officer in question. Jian finally gave me a slap on the shoulder and a

sip at his flask of tepid sour wine, taught me the proper pronunciation of

‘foreign devil’ in his own language, and I thought matters settled

reasonably well. It helped that he could be amused by my attempts to

scale the ladder to the entry-port of the war-junk.

The scent of salt and deep water faded, replaced by the spices and

sandalwood of the junk, always underlying its permanent odour of sweat

and cooking. I swung myself inboard.

A hand caught my elbow, steadying me enough that I didn’t drop the

leather sack of drawings.

Rekhmire’, I found; looking up into his sun-flushed face. He glared

down with unexpected disapproval.

I thought it best to ask plain and direct. ‘What’s the matter?’

The Egyptian snorted, with a sour look at the boat on its davits. ‘I saw

you scrambling down into that, earlier . . . ’

Between the steps on the hull’s slope, and a rope and wood ladder,

‘scramble’ is not an inappropriate term, both down and back up.

Rekhmire’’s sun-darkened finger indicated the main one of the seven

masts, and the platform high in the cross-trees. ‘And you’ve climbed up

there.’

The crow’s-nest made me dizzy in a more than physical sense.

Gripping hard enough that my nails dug into the wood, I had found

myself surrounded at dawn by a vast and chilly circle of sea, green as

Venetian glass, with the sun laying stripes across the waves of a crimson

so startling I would not have dared to paint it so. The sea turned

innocent milky-blue as the sun rose, and I had heard the lookout’s cry of

a sail, and squinted into the light at the horizon.

The sails of a dhow appeared, blistering white, but not the ship itself –

204

I saw the tops of the lateen sails first, and then the mid parts, and only as

it advanced to us up the slope of the world did the hull become visible.

It was that knowledge that we stand all the time at the crest of an

invisible hill that dizzied me. I welcomed the return to the deck, and the

illusion that the world is flat.

‘Yes.’ I drew a sharp, deep breath. ‘I have. And?’

‘Are you
trying
to leave your child an orphan!’

Silenced thoroughly, it was a moment before I could gather enough

wit to say, ‘Her grandfather Honorius would care for her, likely better

than I could – and she would at least grow up without being watched to

see if she turns into a monster!’

Rekhmire’’s complexion darkened and reddened. He turned his back

on me, knuckles white, swinging his crutch to shift himself down the

deck towards the stern cabins.

I
am
a
fool.

Sails towered above me as I ran to catch him up on the tar-spotted

deck. Sails themselves taller than palace walls, creaking and swaying, but

picking up no breeze. I scrambled after his unexpectedly brisk passage,

past mast after mast, slatted shadows falling across the wood underfoot.

The deck was hot despite my sandals.

‘Rekhmire’ – I know you’d climb if you could: you don’t desire me to

stop because of that?’

He glared at me. ‘Of course not.’

Make
that
‘tactless
fool’
.

Heat-melted tar dropped from the rigging in hot black roundels.

Rekhmire’ strode on down the deck without being touched. I dodged one

– only to catch another, streaking down the front of my linen tunic with a

sharp sting.

Grins came at me from crewmen hauling on ropes or descending from

the three main crow’s-nests. I did not need to translate their remarks as I

followed Rekhmire’ into the welcome shade of the cabin.

‘I’m sorry!’ I blurted.

‘“Stupid barbarian”!’ Rekhmire’ shot a smile over his shoulder, lifted

one pointing finger to indicate the crew outside, and assumed an

innocence as of one merely translating the words of others.

I stripped the tar-marked tunic off. Grinning in relief, I muttered,

‘Fuck eighteen generations of your ancestors, book-buyer!’

I was careful enough to practise my Chin out of earshot of the crew,

however much the tar stung.

‘I
am
sorry,’ I added. ‘Where are we? Other than becalmed in Hell?’

Rekhmire’ gave me an amused look. ‘What have you got against the

last eighteen generations of my ancestors in particular? And, becalmed in

the Gulf of Sirte, Sebekhotep tells me.’

Passing into the first of the airy and spacious inner cabins we had been

allocated – and certainly I had never known of such a thing on a

205

European ship of any kind – I threw myself flat on the low bed, letting the snapsack fall where it might, and rubbed at the reddened mark the tar

left. ‘You’re not joking, are you? You do know the last eighteen

generations of your family!’

‘I share my ancestors with Queen Ty-ameny. That helps.’ The large

Egyptian smiled a little. ‘I can trace my ancestors back to the first

Cleopatra.’

‘I can trace mine back to my father . . . ’

He held his hand out: I realised it held an impossibly translucent

porcelain cup. I beamed, took it, and drank. The herbal drink was

bearable, cold, in this hot weather.

Trace my ancestry back to my father – and to my mother.

My smile died, the thought of Rosamunda still enough to make me

cold in my belly.

A further door opened and shut, and cut off the sound of a crying

baby.

‘Carrasco . . . ’ I lifted my head. ‘How long?’

He shrugged. ‘Not very long.’

I scrambled up, moving through the open door into the next room,

and dropped into a crouch by Onorata’s cradle. Fed an hour ago, not wet

– I checked – and Carrasco had evidently been sitting by the fan that

cooled her. I straightened up.

‘She’s bored,’ I guessed. ‘Take her to see the goats again.’

We travelled accompanied by two nanny-goats from the
Sekhmet
, their

offspring, and a sire, in case we should need more. Onorata appeared to

thrive on the warm fresh milk that I fed her, along with Carrasco’s gruel.

She was, I thought, passably fond of the goats, or at least she pushed

herself up on her front with her round arms when I laid her in the straw,

and laughed in what sounded like delight, staring at Carrasco or I

milking them.

I went back through, to search out a clean tunic, and found Carrasco

with his head down and shoulders hunched, as if he could avoid

Rekhmire’ looking at him. The book-buyer had sat on the wide ledge of

the cabin window.

‘Carrasco—’ I pulled the new tunic on, and realised only in retrospect

that I had not been in the least self-conscious exposing my small breasts.

I coloured, despite them now being covered.

‘When you were spying,’ I said bluntly. ‘Did you send word back

telling Videric—’
Rosamunda!
‘—about being a grandparent?’

‘That you were with child, yes.’

He did not say,
After
she
was
born,
I
was
in
jail
, but I could read it in the flush that reddened his neck.

Rekhmire’ swallowed his own cup of liquid, and spoke as if Carrasco

did not exist. ‘I’ve been looking at charts with Sebekhotep.’

Sebekhotep, with the face of a Pharaoh, a lean and wolfish body, and

206

an appetite that could feed four men, had served on Queen Ty-ameny’s

naval fire-ships as well as commercial cargo ships; I suspected he might

not actually need the many portolans and charts he’d come aboard with,

to find his way around the Middle Sea. But he behaved as if he did, and I

might have, in his place – too spectacularly good a navigator, and Zheng

He might just decide he needed to keep this particular barbarian.

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

‘
Maˆshàng!
’, ‘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
.