by Mary Gentle
The silent room echoed to a tiny sharp snap.
I looked down. The serpentine stem of the goblet I had picked up had
snapped neatly into two.
Gently, I put the parts of the glass down in the straw-lined crate.
‘I have the answer,’ I said, ‘if you will listen.’
Honorius seated himself again on the bench, one hand resting on the
table. As I watched, it curled into a white-knuckled fist. Rekhmire’
steepled his fingers and gazed at me over his clean spade-cut nails.
‘Videric will not stop,’ I repeated. ‘And I can see only one way to stop
him eventually killing me. Killing us, I should say – he won’t leave witnesses. And that one way is . . . We have to see that Videric gets what
he wants.’
Honorius blinked in total bewilderment. ‘But he wants you dead!’
I snorted a laugh, and wiped at my face.
‘Apologies! No. Think. He wants me dead, but only as the means to
something else. He desires to be summoned back from exile. He wants to
be Rodrigo’s adviser again. Videric wants to be the King’s First Minister
of Taraconensis.’
Rekhmire’ stared at me with as blank an expression as I had ever seen
on his face. ‘And . . . ’
‘And – that’s what we have to do.’
I looked from the Egyptian to my father, and from Honorius back to
Rekhmire’.
‘That’s what will stop these attempts at murder. That’s what will make
us safe. I have to help my greatest enemy.’
Rage boiled up through me with the suddenness of thunder in
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summer. I seized up the wooden crate of export glass, and hurled it two-
handed and bodily towards the room’s further wall.
It struck home with a vibrant, world-shattering crash.
‘I have to help the man who’s trying to kill me. And the only way to help Videric . . . I have to help him get what he wants. I have to put him
back in power.’
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Part Two
Alexandria-in-Exile
1
‘ That means . . . ’ I broke the silence with some deliberation. ‘ . . . that I go back to Taraconensis, now, and negotiate this with Videric. Face to
face.’
Rekhmire’, bent awkwardly over on his crutches, and surveying the
remains of the crate of export glass, shot a startled look at me. ‘You do
not!’
‘Is it necessary to point out that you freed me in Rome?’
The Egyptian straightened up, monumentally prepared to rebuke me.
Honorius rose to his feet, knocking his own glass over. Spilled wine
spread in a pool of reflection that I wished I might paint.
The Lion of Castile snapped, ‘You may be of age, but as your
father—’
I stopped pacing and completed his words: ‘—You’ve learned to
recognise a losing battle when you see one?’
‘Don’t you be cheeky with me, young Ilario!’
I swung around, striding back up the room, ignoring the pull of
healing stitches. Low as the beams were, and cramped as these small
quarters might be, movement was the only thing that eased my mind.
Wearing one of Neferet’s Alexandrine housecoats and a doublet is not
like wearing Frankish petticoats. I begin to feel more myself than I have since I came to Venice.
I pushed open the panelled shutters, letting in cold spring air, and
gazed down at the canal at the rear of the embassy. Brickwork reflected
in the water. The sun stood high enough overhead to strike down
between the tall buildings. Symmetrical ripples spidered off the water,
too bright to look at directly.
‘Tell me that there’s any other way to do this!’ Dazzled, I turned about; resting my back against the windowsill. I stared into a room now
completely black to my eyes. ‘Videric lost his place at the King’s side
because people won’t allow Rodrigo to have a would-be murderer there.
You know Carthage will have said Videric tried to kill me, no matter how
much of it was Rosamunda!’
In the brilliance of the water outside, I see the Court of Fountains in
Taraco, regardless of the heat there and the chill here.
‘Videric will be devising plans to get back into favour. Which all
depend on having me dead and forgotten. He’ll send more men like
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Carrasco. If we’re in Frankish territory, he’s long used to dealing with the
banking firms and all the major merchants for King Rodrigo – he can
pick up gossip about hermaphrodites, about painters . . . With Federico’s
reports, he knows as much about what I’m doing as you do.’
Honorius frankly scowled, I saw, as my eyes adapted back to light and
shadow. He desired to contradict me. Clearly, he couldn’t.
Rekhmire’ seated himself on the bench with a grunt, and a clatter of
crutches. ‘It’s true: Aldra Videric would be better returned to court as your King’s minister. Carthage is under the Penitence, and Iberia is the
grain-basket of the empire. Any excuse to take over more of its kingdoms
. . . It seems there are too many people with confidence in First Minister
Videric as a politician, and King Rodrigo’s right hand.’
Which made me desire to spit out something bitter. Why hearing
confirmation of my thoughts should create such revulsion, when I had
been brought to admit the truth of the argument through long hours
spent feeding Onorata and brooding, I did not know.
I stared both of them down: the sitting spy, and the standing General,
whom I cannot afford at this moment to think of as friend and father.
‘Who else can sort this out but me? If I go back to Taraco, persuade
Videric that I’m not interested in having Rosamunda arrested for my
attempted murder—’
Honorius interrupted by lifting his head and bellowing, ‘Carrasco!’
While my ears still rang, Ramiro Carrasco came in, and shut the door
behind him on the sound of a crying baby. He shot a frightened look
around the room. The slave’s look, which I know well: What have I done?
And: It doesn’t matter if I did anything or not, am I going to suffer for it?
He does learn fast.
‘You.’ Honorius seemed reluctant to call the assassin by his name
again. ‘Tell me something. How long might you live, if you stepped off a
ship in Taraconensis now?’
They speak of men going white. It would be more accurate, I thought,
feeling the shape of it in my fingers that itched to draw, to say that their
faces go sunken. It wasn’t possible to tell if Ramiro Carrasco the slave
looked pale in this dim room. He did instantly look ten years older.
He snorted unsteadily. ‘Minutes if I’m lucky! As long as it’ll take the
Aldra to send out his household men disguised as bandits. On territory
he knows.’
Carrasco swung about, unslavelike, and shot me a look of appeal.
‘My family – they’ll be dead too! He’d leave nothing! You can’t be
thinking of—’
Honorius, apparently unmoved by Carrasco’s disrespect in not
addressing him as ‘master’, leaned his hand on the table, tapping a finger
on the wood. ‘Ilario’s thinking of travelling back to Taraco. What about
it, Ilario, would you take your slave?’
Hon
orius didn’t take his eyes off Carrasco as he spoke.
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That will be part of his continuing investigation into whether the man
speaks the truth, I thought. As well as pointing out to Ilario what an idiot
Ilario is . . .
Stubborn, I said, ‘Ramiro Carrasco will stay with you.’
Rekhmire’ leaned his elbows on the table, beside Honorius; his weight
making the wood groan. ‘So much for the slave Carrasco as your shield
against Aldra Videric . . . ’
‘He can be that out of my company.’
I doubted the truth of it even as I said it. And kicked a joint-stool out
of the way as I paced back down the length of the room.
Ramiro Carrasco blinked at me with the bewildered look of a slave
realising that none of the decisions which will affect him are taken with
any reference to what he thinks.
I could read nothing on Rekhmire’’s impassive countenance. An
unexpected pang went through me. Who knows, I thought, what orders he’ll receive from Alexandria, when ships can safely travel here from Constantinople?
Orders that take precedence over this.
‘And my granddaughter?’ Honorius demanded, behind me. ‘Do I sit
in some place as yet undecided, with your slave and your baby? While
you venture back to Taraco, walk up to Videric, and – watch your head
go bouncing across the ground, because it won’t take ten heartbeats for
one of his men to “protect” him! He needs you dead, Ilario! What better
excuse for instant execution than “Ilario wanted revenge and I had to
defend myself”? You won’t get a chance to speak to the King. Nor to any
other man. Videric’s informers will tell him what ship you’re on, and
some thug will hit you behind the ear with a cudgel and tip you over the
quay-side before you get a foot off the gang-plank!’
I swung around. ‘Then tell me some other way to do this!’
The shout bounced back flatly off the plaster and beams, silencing
Honorius.
I leaned on the other side of the table, both fists against the wood,
staring down at the retired soldier, my father. ‘Videric must listen when I
speak to him. How can I know, here, what it will take to get him back in
favour? I don’t know how King Rodrigo will ever be able to say, Here’s
Videric, he’s my First Minister again. And if I don’t go and ask Videric, face to face, I never will know!’
Rekhmire’ raised his clear low tenor voice. ‘If you will stop charging
full-tilt into things—!’
Honorius interrupted, a burning look in his eye. ‘I forbid this.’
Rekhmire’ smacked one large palm against the side of his forehead.
‘Amun and Amunet! The donkey can be led but not driven!’
Honorius snorted down his nose and glared at me. ‘In my experience,
the donkey can’t be led or driven!’
My fingernails drove painfully into my palms.
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A faint sound of Onorata’s crying reached through the ill-shut door
and clawed down the tendons and muscles of my neck, stiffening them.
With an effort, I pushed away my urge to rush to her.
‘You,’ I said quietly, ‘need not look after the child: I will. I may be no
mother at all to her—’
And that’s as well, when you think of Rosamunda!
‘—But at least I know now how to be a father.’
I inclined my head in thanks to Honorius. He looked taken aback in
the extreme.
To Rekhmire’, I added, ‘I know you have business for Constantinople;
I can’t ask you to go out of your way. I do thank you for what you’ve done for me. If you’re going to Constantinople – to Alexandria – it would
help me if you’d take Ramiro Carrasco with you as your slave. Probably
Videric will have a harder time getting him murdered if he’s there.’
Rekhmire’’s mouth looked as if he’d eaten fresh lemon.
He turned his head, not to look at Carrasco, as I expected, but to
exchange glances with Honorius.
‘Fucking idiot!’ The retired Captain-General of Leon and Castile
waved an expressive hand. ‘My son-daughter; not you.’
‘Ah.’ Rekhmire’’s smile was that familiar all-but-imperceptible one
that meant he was truly amused. ‘Well, it is more generally applicable,
after all.’
‘Oh, ay.’ Honorius nodded, hit himself on the chest with his fist, and
then pointed a sword-callused hand at Ramiro Carrasco. ‘Ilario’s father,
slave, and . . . ’
‘“Book-buyer”?’ Rekhmire’ suggested.
You could have scraped paint off acacia wood with Honorius’s look of
scepticism.
‘Book. Buyer.’ The soldier paced down the room and planted himself
in front of me, with the light of the window in his face. His eyes
narrowed, either against the brightness or his thoughts. He glared down
the few inches difference between our heights.
‘If you go marching back into Taraconensis, Videric will kill you! Yes,
I’ll agree: you’re right that Videric needs to be put back at Rodrigo’s side
– with a collar on him, so he can’t do too much damage! But this is not
the way to go about it!’
The Egyptian snorted. ‘You’ll never tell him – her – Ilario! – that.’
Rekhmire’ was being chronological, I thought, rather than mistaken in
his gender.
I could see in his expression that same emotion I’d seen when he asked
me how long it was after Rosamunda attempted to stab me that I fled
Taraco.
How long was it after I met Sulva that I asked her to wed me?
Anger set me to pacing the room again. ‘No, Taraconensis isn’t safe.
Nowhere else is more safe! Father, you said it yourself – Videric’s had
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Federico looking for me in Rome, and Florence, and Venice. If I looked
for a local mastro in Bologna or Ravenna or Milan, now, Videric would
find me. And none of that—’ I glanced aside, taking in Rekhmire’’s glare.
‘None of it, no matter where I hide, will get me closer to putting Videric
back into power!’
The silence after my words rang in the low-ceilinged room.
Honorius folded his arms. In the same moment, Rekhmire’ also folded
his. In another mood it would have made me burst out laughing – both of
them scowling like pediment sculptures in Green cathedrals. As it was, it
snapped what little temper remained to me.
‘I bought that man!’ I flung out one arm to point at Carrasco. He
visibly startled. ‘Because he is protection. Because all I want to do is be
left alone to paint.’
The floorboards creaked under me as I restlessly shifted, gripping my
hands together to deny that urge to frantic pacing.
‘Because I have a child that, if it doesn’t die of some childhood disease,
or merely die, I need to protect. And now the sole and only way I can see
to achieve that – is to go back and sort things out with my stepfather—’
Rekhmire’ interrupted. ‘Say if you leave Venice, take sanctuary in
Alexandria—’
‘There is no sanctuary!’ I found myself making fists again, nails leaving
white crescents against my skin. ‘None that’s more than temporary.
Videric’s been the King�
�s councillor for more than twenty years. I know
how courts work. Videric knows men in every major city in the
Mediterranean and Frankish lands, and if he’s out of favour now, he can
still find some men who think that won’t last. So they’ll do him favours.
Look out for travellers. Pass word back to him. He found me here; he’ll
find me again. If he can’t kill me because of Ramiro here, then he’ll kill
both of us, and the only way I can see to stop this is to go back to Taraco!’
‘But,’ Rekhmire’ protested.
The reasonable tone of his voice triggered my vision to a blur of rage.
‘No, I won’t hear more!’
Honorius drew himself up a little, at the table’s end, inclining his head.
He rested his hands flat on the wood.
If I painted him, I thought, it would be just so, with campaign maps
under his fingers, and lanterns behind, illuminating the dark interior of a
military commander’s tent.
‘Yes, this has to be done.’ He fixed me with a direct look. ‘But there is
least of all any sanctuary for you in Taraco! I at least have an excuse, a need, to go home to my King. And I’ll use that chance to talk to him;
convince Rodrigo Coverrubias that I’d far rather see First Minister
Videric than First Minister Honorius. But you – you have no reason to
go home except to be murdered, and I won’t allow it.’
There was no blustering father in his voice now. It was all confident
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Captain-General; the commander who knows he will be obeyed because
there is no other reasonable option.
More quietly, he added, ‘Constantinople is still the safest destination –
for you and that rat’s testicle Carrasco.’
Honorius continued over Rekhmire’’s splutter of amusement, and
Ramiro Carrasco’s glare.
‘Let the spy take you to his city, until we can begin to solve this.’
Rekhmire’, having looked sour as an early plum at spy, broke his
silence with a sigh. ‘Regrettably, I might need to send, rather than take.’
He glanced up at Honorius. ‘If I don’t find Herr Mainz by the time ships
can sail for Alexandria, then I suspect my orders will send me to
Florence, to shake the information of his whereabouts out of Neferet.
