Ilario, the Stone Golem (19 page)

‘Your petty little republic! Who is Duke? Who cares! Honest men

can’t work, or are killed, and then another nobleman, same as the last!’

I moved my foot. ‘I don’t disagree. But a clear explanation and less

public noise might be of more use than a political discussion. Florence

isn’t my republic, and I’m not a servant of Leon Battista Alberti.’

And Herr Mainz must take me for a man, I realised, with my back to

the open door’s light, and cloaked as I am. Since he doesn’t treat me as a

woman.

‘I’m from the Alexandrine embassy,’ I persisted.

‘The woman said, no messages; that she would not take even letters

from me!’

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That confirmed every suspicion.
Damn
Neferet!
I wondered which of the sacred Eight one appeals to in such circumstances.

Honesty still remaining my best option, I said, ‘Madonna Neferet was

a conspirator along with Leon Battista; they both had their reasons for

wanting you to stay here in Venice. They’ve both been sent into exile,

now. The representative of Alexandria has been looking for you.’

He snorted derisively.

I brought out the hand-bill, hoping it would act as my credentials.

Tilting the paper to catch the grey light, I observed, ‘I’ve seen nothing

like this before. The edges of the letters are sharp as if they’d been cut.’

‘They are.’ Herr Mainz sounded smug.

I nodded at long metal stylus-shapes in his hands. ‘But if your type is

made from lead – I know lead—’

My mind clearly sees a silver-grey smear on the masonry of a bridge.

Saverico’s brigandine; Rekhmire’’s leg.
This
may be an even more

dangerous
use
for
lead
.

‘I’m not ignorant,’ I offered. ‘Men have been talking about the dangers

of a mechanical scribe, and if one could be built, since I was a child.

Lead’s soft. It deforms. The type would be crushed after printing a few

sheets, the edges of the letters smeared.’

He gave me an abrasively close-mouthed smile, confirming himself

secretive as other German Guildsmen, and no fool.

I took a breath, and pressed the limits of my authority.

‘Alexandria wants you and your printing-
machina
in Constantinople, if

you’ll come. The Pharaoh-Queen may be willing to become your patron,

if the printing works.’

The light gave Mainz – Gutenberg – oddly silver eyes. He looked

stunned. ‘I have not dared to go out, to search . . . The Doge’s officers,

here . . . ’

I took a swift glance around the shabby workshop. ‘What do you need

to bring with you, to replicate this device in Alexandria?’

Herr Mainz looked at me for a long moment, turned his back, and

emptied his handful of long metal type into a large canvas bag.

The contents of a rattling shallow tray followed.

‘What I need? All of it!’ Gutenberg freed one hand to tap the side of

his head, without turning round. ‘But all is here, safe, I do not forget!’

‘No, but accidents happen to any man.’

He shrugged, as much as a man may who is rapidly tying up the neck

of a sack. ‘What, you’d have me tell my Guild secrets? The ratio of

antimony and tin to lead, so that the edges of these letters stay sharp?

Then what is stopping your theft of that?’

I could find no quick answer that I thought would convince him.

I squinted through the gloom. The
machina’s
screw was turned by

wooden shafts, thick through as a gondola’s oar.

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‘We can send men back to dismantle the printing-
machina
and bring

it.’

I glanced around, uneasy for no reason I could pin down, and wished

for the first time in many months that I had a sword, and a more recent

memory of my knight’s training in Taraco.

‘If I may, I’ll call my father’s guards, and we can go to the embassy

now.’

I found myself glad of the grey cloud and sleet, that brought twilight in

ahead of its time.

A gondola took us as far as the Canal Grande, and then another boat

over to the Dorsodura quarter, where we reverted to foot. In a maze of

small alleys and waterways that bemused my sense of direction, Tottola

took one long stride and caught up, dipping his head to murmur:

‘There are men behind us. Somewhere between ten and twelve, lightly

armed, no armour except breastplates.’

Dread twisted cold in my belly. ‘The Venetians were having his

workshop watched!’

Attila, as closely attached to Herr Mainz’s side as he might be without

rope binding them together, spoke something in one of the Germanic

tongues of the Holy Roman Empire, to which the printer responded.

Reverting to Visigothic Latin, Attila said, ‘Council of Ten.’

Increasing my pace put a line of pain across my lower abdomen.

‘I can’t run,’ I confessed, feeling my face burn hot against the cold

wind. ‘
Get
him
to
the
embassy
. Don’t wait for me. Once you’re there, they can’t touch him.’

The Germanic brothers exchanged a look over my head.

Tottola grunted. ‘
I’m
not waiting to see what the captain would do if

we left you!’

He moved swiftly enough that it took me by surprise. As Attila and

Herr Mainz burst into a run, Tottola scooped his arms under my

shoulders and knees, and lifted me clear off the cobbles.

Abandoning the parcels of paper, and the ceramic pots of green earth

pigment that shattered as they fell, Tottola clutched me against his chest

and began to run.

‘Bar the gates!’ Attila bawled as he hustled Herr Mainz ahead of me.

‘
Turn
out
the
guard!
’

Berenguer and Saverico hauled the iron trellis of the Alexandrine gate

open, stood ready, and slammed it on the heels of our passing through.

The bare garden of the Alexandrine house filled with running men,

Sergeant Orazi at their head. Tottola breasted the flood – and failed to

put me down, despite urgent request. The house door banged open; we

entered from cold to warmth.

Rekhmire’, balanced on crutches in the entrance hall, shouted at me

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immediately he saw me. ‘How could you leave this house where you’re

safe!’

Pointing out that I am most safe wherever Honorius’s Hunnish

soldiers are, I thought would not help me.

‘I’m back here safely,’ I snapped, as Tottola set me down on my feet

like a child in the entrance hall. ‘Even if the Venetians
are
on our heels!’

That turned out not to be a wise thing to say: Rekhmire’ broke into a

flood of Alexandrine Latin – much of which I understood, although I

would rather not – and then into Pharaonic Egyptian.

A glance at Honorius as he stomped in from the gate showed him

unlikely to help me with translation.

Not that I need it, I reflected, watching Rekhmire’ balance his two

crutches precariously in his armpits, so he could windmill his arms while

he shouted at me. It all amounts to ‘You can walk around Venice, I can’t,

and this gives rise to fear.’

‘We have the officers of Foscari’s council on our doorstep,’ Honorius

announced matter-of-factly. He surveyed the man from Mainz, where

the German stood dishevelled and panting, and then turned his attention

to me. ‘And
you
found him, why?’

‘Because I engaged in a paper chase!’ I rearranged my cloak, that had

been rucked up in the chase. In peripheral vision I saw Gutenberg blink

as he caught a glimpse of my skirts. ‘As to the Doge’s men – I thought

they had no idea of where he was.’

It had seemed reasonable, as we were rowed back, to suppose that the

Council of Ten must be hunting for a large facility, a factory or a large

scriptorium, or a workshop where woodcuts had somehow been made

able to cut small letters. Not one man in a shed.

The Egyptian got out hoarsely, ‘They surely must have failed to find

him while Alberti was here, or they would have stopped him.’

Talking to Gutenberg in the gondola had given me somewhat of his

background; I summarised it.

‘He was setting three or four pamphlets a week. As fast as Leon could

write them. They went off in bales on mule-back, to Florence. After

Leon and Neferet left, he didn’t have business contacts, and he heard the

Doge’s council wanted to speak to him and went into hiding.’ I cocked

my head, listening to raised voices at the outer gate. ‘They must

have found him and been watching him, hoping to pick up other

conspirators.’

‘Instead, they found us.’ Honorius scowled. Noise rose louder from

the gate. Evidently the Council of Ten weren’t used to being defied by

armed foreigners.

Honorius’s household guard are not a large number of men, I realised,

compared to how many soldiers the Doge of Venice might call to arms.

Suppose
we
end
with
Carmagnola
outside
the
Alexandria
House?

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Rekhmire’ abruptly closed a hand over my shoulder. His eyes shone

bright in the lantern-light. ‘Listen.’

I could pick out nothing among the voices, strain as I might.

Honorius, when I caught his eye, shook his head bemusedly.

Rekhmire’ secured his grasp on his crutches and swung himself

awkwardly and rapidly out into the late afternoon twilight, seeming

oblivious to the cold sleet landing on his bare head.

I barely caught Honorius’s signal to Attila, to stay with Gutenberg, and

then my father strode with me as I stumbled outside again in the

Egyptian’s wake.

Lanterns illuminated the gate area, but made the desolate garden even

darker. The scent of canal-water pervaded the air. Voices lifted in

screaming confrontation at the iron grille of the Alexandrine house,

where iron bars had been dropped into sockets across the gate.

Words rang like brazen trumpets in the language of the lagoon, and in

Visigothic and Frankish Latin – and in another tongue that I only

recognised as I caught it for the second time.

‘
Listen!
’ I echoed, seizing Honorius’s arm. ‘That’s Pharaonic Egyptian,

I swear it!’

The mercenary soldiers made way automatically for my father, their

faces grim under the lanterns, helmets and pole-axes and swords

catching the light.

The circle of torches and lanterns beyond the gate was wider, and the

Council of Ten’s officers more numerous, but I hardly spared the

Venetians a look.

In chiaroscuro, their reddish-brown flesh covered by lamellar leather

armour, and with spears in their hands, a squad of some fifty or so men

in Alexandrine clothing formed a double line towards the gate.

Down the path between them, across the S. Barnaba campo, a well-

padded male figure strolled, not shivering despite his linen kilt and bare

legs. His scarlet cloak flowed out behind him, light sparking from the

fabric where droplets of rain lodged in the weave.

He stopped before the iron of the gate, a yard or two of space

separating us.

His features took me back instantly to another city and another

embassy. I found myself rubbing my hands one against the other, as if

my skin felt still sticky from trying to pry stone fingers out of Mastro Masaccio’s throat.

The Alexandrine cast a leisurely eye around, the uproar from the

Doge’s soldiers quietening as he did so, and ended with a nod of greeting

to Rekhmire’.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lord Menmet-Ra remarked. ‘Am I interrupting some-

thing?’

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4

He seemed so consciously pleased with his pose that a man could hardly

resent it.

Inadvertently, I broke the silence. ‘You’re not in Rome!’

Heads turned. I blushed.
That
sounded
foolish!

I had thought that, having drawn so many sketches now of Masaccio

in ink or silverpoint or charcoal, I had begun to have difficulty in

remembering Masaccio himself. This tall round eunuch in Alexandrine

kilt and lapis-lazuli collar returned Masaccio’s dead features intensely to

my mind.

‘Ilario.’ He nodded to me.

‘Lord Menmet-Ra,’ I apologised.

The last time I saw the Alexandrine, he had been dishevelled and in a