Ilario, the Stone Golem (33 page)

you may as well put a ribbon on a boulder. ‘This is nothing more nor less

than a weapon, no matter what shape it is.’

Ty-ameny stepped lightly up the carved porphyry steps and sat on the

throne, a yard from the golem. The lamp cast shadows in the sockets of

her eyes.

‘If we’re very lucky,’ she observed flatly, ‘whatever madman wrought

this in Carthage can only make a few of them. A handful. Not dozens.

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Because if you see these on the field of battle, in numbers . . . If I see them outside this city’s walls . . . ’

Honorius had seen my one partial rendering of the stone golem (done

out of memory), and instantly remarked,
A
man
armoured
invulnerably
at
every
point!
And after a pause, had added,
Who
can’t
be
stopped
by
wounds.
Only
hacked
to
pieces
.

I repeated this aloud.

Ahhotep looked as if he had suffered six weeks with a fever. Stress

drew dark lines down from his nose to the corners of his mouth.

‘I fear it badly enough, Master Ilario.’ He put his hand on the edge of

the purple throne, glancing at Ty-ameny. ‘As her Great Name knows, I

fear seeing this thing come to life and kill the Queen. Tell us what you know.’

I told him everything.

What I thought I could not remember, his questions prodded out of

me. The night turned on, oil in the lamp guttering, until at last I was telling my story in the dark. I couldn’t shut my eyes hard enough to

prevent hot tears leaking out from under the lids.
Masaccio.
Sulva
. And where is her bride-piece statue, now?

Ty-ameny became gradually silent.

I fretted.
I
am
telling
her
nothing
she
does
not
already
know
.

An urgent need for sleep weighed me down, but I felt an unexpected

sympathy for the Pharaoh-Queen – I, at least, need not ever see the

monstrous thing again; she must have the golem beside her throne

whenever she gives audience.

‘Could it not have sunk on the ship coming from Rome?’ I finally

blurted out.

A new oil-lamp flared to light under Ahhotep’s hands. By it, I saw that

Ty-ameny smiled. She shook her head. ‘Too many spies and gossips

have seen it here.’

The gleam of light on stone disturbed me.

‘It needs painting, Great Queen. Could it not be in a workshop,

instead of standing beside the throne?’

Ahhotep came forward, one hand fiddling with his neck-chain. ‘The

Carthaginian envoy is expected. He will expect to see the gift where

protocol demands it should be.’

‘For the same reason,’ Ty-ameny put it, with a gloomy cheerfulness

that reminded me much of Rekhmire’, ‘we can neither set it in Roman

concrete nor forge chains around it.’

‘Can’t you—’ I waved a hand, frustrated. ‘Restrain it secretly, in some

way?’

‘If there is such a way, none of my Royal Mathematicians have advised

me of it.’

Silence fell. It had been quiet some time when I heard Ahhotep’s

sandals on the mosaic, diminishing away from us. Before I could

162

formulate a question, I heard the creak of a door opening. A larger

postern door, by the faint light that streamed in from it, wet and chill with dew. The sun has risen.

‘From what you tell me,’ Ty-ameny observed quietly, ‘
any
man may

have the word that orders the stone man to act. I need not go to the

trouble of banning all Carthaginians from the court, because they might

send anyone. One of their own, or not.’

Raw-throated from speech, now, I nodded my agreement.

‘I need to stay alive.’ The woman pushed herself up, weight on her

wrists, and stepped stiffly down from the throne. Unselfconsciously, she

reached up to link her arm in mine, walking us both towards the door.

The flagstones outside were dry of dew already. The sky was a perfect

infinite blue, and the sun not yet risen.

‘I don’t mean that I don’t want to die.’ She made a small smile,

evidently a strain. ‘Although I don’t. But I need to live out this

generation, and I need my daughter to rule the next one. And not just for

Alexandria’s sake.’

She looked at me with some concern.

‘You need to sleep. But we’ll go back by way of the Library – Ahhotep,

go tell them we’re coming – because there are things I need to discuss

with you.’

Passing the building last night had given me no idea of its size. The

lemon-coloured light of the dawn illuminated roof on roof, storey on

storey, of the Royal Library; and I suspected that the obelisk-fronted

door we entered by was only one of many opening into a library

complex.

Inside, the stone of walls and floor shone pale, echoing daylight

through the corridors and halls. Stepping over the threshold, I was hit by

the scent of parchment, papyrus, scrolls . . . Plunged into memory of the

scriptorium in Rodrigo Sanguerra’s castle.

Our steps echoed. I followed Ty-ameny’s small figure through gallery

after gallery of leather scroll-cases, lost among squat pillars and vast

square-lintelled archways. The rooms grew smaller and scruffier after a

while, and the Queen called greetings to eunuch clerks already at their

desks, doing reconstruction work on old papyruses. Cheerful voices

called out from one chamber to the next.

About the time I thought we’d run out of building – and owned myself

completely lost – Ty-ameny turned sharply right and loped up a flight of

sandstone steps, that were less surprisingly worn away into a dip in the

middle.

The arch at the top opened into a bright gallery. Carved windows

opened into a piazza below us.

No books. No scrolls.
Because
the
light
would
fade
them
. They want good light for . . .

163

‘The printing-
machina
.’

The Pharaoh-Queen’s subjects must have been working through the

night. Herr Mainz – Herr Gutenberg – stood beside a wooden frame,

gesturing expansively, and broke off to grin like a badger at Ty-ameny.

‘Great Queen! We should have it finished before the end of today. Or

at least the prototype.’

Ty-ameny strode up to stand beside him, not even as high as his

shoulder. Her eyes glittered as she appeared to follow his report of his

progress.

‘You also know how this works?’ she demanded of me.

Gutenberg stroked blunted fingers over a tray of metal type. ‘Messer

Ilario does not. No man but I, not even in my Guild.’

Storms on the voyage through the Aegean might have robbed Ty-

ameny of her printing-
machina
; likewise the cholera and plague endemic

to large cities. I thought perhaps Ty-ameny might persuade him to write

his plans down, where I had failed.

Ty-ameny smiled at him. Her tiny ruddy-skinned hand stroked the

printing-
machina
’s frame as if it were a blood-horse.

‘Not the details. The meaning. That in the time the scriptorium takes

to copy a scroll once, I can have you set the type to print the same words.

And in the time it takes to copy a scroll
twice
– I can have five hundred copies, printed and ready!’

She wiped her fingers down her plain linen robes, seemingly unaware

of the black grease.

Gutenberg very precisely explained, in a mixture of German and bad

Carthaginian Latin, how it would take longer to set up his lead letters the

first time than to copy them on paper, but after that . . . Ty-ameny

clearly wasn’t listening. As Gutenberg went back to his machine, she

took my arm, gazing up into my face, and pointed.

‘You see that?’

I stared into an empty corner of the gallery.

‘A bucket.’ Embarrassed by memory of what happened in the throne

room, I added, ‘Master Rekhmire’ told me – you have them in every

room here, because of the fear of fire.’

I thought of Masaccio’s cluttered workshop, full of wooden frames,

canvas, pigments, oils, buckets of sand and water. The same principle,

even if he had appeared to work in chaos.

Ty-ameny released my arm.

‘Yes. We have buckets. Water and sand. And all the walls are

masonry. And there are courtyards between various buildings in the

complex, to act as firebreaks, and cellars below, insulated from one

another by the living rock. Because these walls are piled high and stuffed

full with papyrus, vellum, paper . . . Everything flammable. Even our

shelves are carved out of stone.’

Her gaze searched out Gutenberg’s tray of lead letters.

164

‘There have been minor fires before. We’ve lost scrolls. Scrolls that

were the last copies of their work. And it doesn’t matter how many clerks

I put into the scriptorium, they won’t catch up the copying of four

thousand years of collecting. And one day, one day . . . One day

everything we have will burn.’

Finding myself close enough to the wall to touch it, I ran a finger down

a seamless masonry join. ‘You can’t know that—’

Ty-ameny’s head jerked up, as if she woke from a deep sleep or vision.

‘I can!’

Ahhotep muttered something; she chopped her tiny hand down in a

surprisingly fierce gesture. She turned sloe-dark eyes on me, and I was

not conscious of her small stature.

‘If there’s no great fire, still, we’re not as great a power as we once were. Conquerors will pass through with fire and sword. It will be

Carthage or the Turks,’ she added, with a flat pragmatic certainty.

I was unsure that Gutenberg understood her Alexandrine Latin; he

straightened and frowned at her.

Ty-ameny paced to the window, and it did not change her dignity in

the least that she must stand up on her toes to stare out at the city below.

‘Cousin Rekhmire’ could have told you this, but I see he has been

circumspect. Still, it’s not a secret among my advisers. We were a great

empire – once. Now we have only one city, with no hinterland. The

Turks have taken our old lands, and nibble away at our borders here.

And Carthage is jealous of any sea-power not hers.’

Her hand gripped the sculpted frame possessively.

‘I’d counted on having my reign and my daughter’s before someone

takes this city and burns it. Time enough to copy the most valuable

volumes here – or at least some of them. I no longer believe we have two

generations. I may be the last of the line of Pharaohs. But now I have

this
—’

She turned about, her gaze hungry on Gutenberg and the
machina
.

‘Now – we can turn out a flood of knowledge! Copies of every scroll

and book and document in the Royal Library – many copies. I’ll send

them as royal gifts to the kings of Francia and Persia and Carthage if I have to. I’ll sell them cheap through Venice. This city will send out so many copies that no fire or war or shipwreck or disaster can ever destroy

every copy of a work. This knowledge will
not
be lost.’

Between the Egyptian Ahhotep and Gutenberg, Ty-ameny appeared

the size of a child. Speaking, there was enough desperate energy in her to

make someone three times her size.

I
should
ask
if
I
can
paint
her!

Hard on the heels of that came another realisation.

‘You don’t mean that Alexandria will fall some day in the far-off

future, do you, Great Queen? You expect it in our lifetime.’

In her lifetime.

165

In mine.

In Onorata’s . . .

‘Soon,’ Ty-amenhotep said. ‘But I’ll sell printed scrolls to the Franks,

to North Africa, to Persia and the Silk Road. Pages for pennies. If not for

the fact that men don’t value what they don’t pay for, I’d give them

away! But every ducat that they earn, I swear I’ll turn to hiring more

scribes, and building more of Herr Mainz’s machines!’

I grew up hearing stories of Constantinople as a city great beyond all

cities of the earth, last home of Pharaonic Egypt, repository of occult

knowledge, free market of traders from every country in Europe and