by Mary Gentle
Ramiro Carrasco.
The cabin’s floor had been padded in places with some cloth very like
a tapestry; it was soft under my feet when I kicked my sandals off.
Padding back towards Rekhmire’, I observed, ‘You want to know if I
despise you, for being a spy.’
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The Egyptian rapidly smoothed down the folds of his linen kilt. That
action was automatic by now: it hid his scars.
Apparently studying the ink-scroll hanging down from one ceiling-
beam, he remarked, ‘That would be one of the reasons I have never
forced you to see what my business is.’
‘ Chun zi! ’
His eyebrows climbed up towards his shaven scalp. ‘And that would
mean?’
‘“Moron”!’
‘Fascinating.’ He took his tablets out of the bag at his belt, and incised
a quick note in the wax. If he had been another man, I would have said
he was suppressing a grin. ‘Why is it you can be impolite in thirteen
languages, painter?’
‘Probably the people I travel around with, book-buyer!’
The Egyptian snorted.
‘Of course,’ I added, ‘I may not be saying it right. My ear still isn’t adjusted to Chin voices.’
‘Perhaps,’ Rekhmire’ agreed. ‘But the tone was unmistakable – at least
to a foreign barbarian . . . ’
He glanced away from me, at the dark wooden beams, and the
intricately inlaid chests we had been loaned for our belongings. If he was
pleased not to be despised, he was also embarrassed, although it would
have been necessary to know him well to be aware of that.
‘Listen—’ He held up his hand.
For a long moment I heard nothing, only the natural creaking and
shifting of a ship, even one this size.
Creaking in rhythm.
I shot to the cabin door and looked up.
Against the hazy sky, all of the sails were belling out, one by one, to catch the wind.
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2
On the morning that we passed the Balearic Islands, Onorata taught
herself to roll.
I had her on the floor-tapestry that the Chin-men used instead of fur
rugs, laying on my belly so I might look her in the eye. She went from staring vaguely in the direction of the ceiling to thrusting with one still-small arm at the floor, and was abruptly over on her front.
We surveyed each other in equal surprise.
She broke out into a crow of laughter.
‘Clever!’ I wondered if she had wit enough yet to imitate, and if she
copied the position of her mother-father. I sat up, thinking to encourage
her to roll back the other way.
A fist rapped against the slatted wooden door, the knocking done in a
Frankish fashion.
‘In!’
A dark-haired figure slunk in from the deck: Ramiro Carrasco de Luis.
He shot a wary look over at Tottola, apparently asleep in one corner with
his arms and ankles crossed.
‘May I speak to you, madonna? Mistress?’
Three months of seeing me in skirts in Venice evidently established me
as a woman so firmly in his mind I will not shift it.
I sighed, and reached over to nudge Tottola’s boot.
The large man’s eyes were already open.
‘Will you take her for a while?’ I nodded towards the inner room. ‘I
won’t be long. It’s probably those chou ba guai goats again!’
Tottola’s dark expression changed to a grin at that. He scooped an
indignant Onorata up and made for the door.
Clearly he thinks Ramiro Carrasco will one day try again to assassinate
me.
Well, I was hardly joking when I told Carrasco that, as a slave, I would
take care to be trusted for a long time before I killed my master. And
then the judges might blame someone else.
The German man-at-arms snorted, ducking under the door lintel to
the inner room. Ramiro Carrasco kept quiet, in a manner that told me, if
he wasn’t yet used to being a slave, he had some idea of what behaviour
was expected of him.
I stood, tugging my tunic straight, picking up my leather sack. The
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tiny inlaid drawers of the Chin furniture ideally suit painting tools.
Remembering to clean and put them away is essential, however, and my
hellion child had distracted me.
‘You can get me a bucket of hot water when you’re done . . . ’
Ramiro Carrasco stood awkwardly in the middle of the cabin; a life
study would show tension in his shoulders and spine.
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘I need to talk to you.’ He glanced at the door to the back cabin, that
stood ajar, not by accident. I saw him take a breath, expanding his
sternum; he scowled to himself.
His feet were bare, dirty, and callused, now. He wore a bleached and
dirty tunic, pulled down over a Frankish shirt that hung to his mid-thigh,
and his hose were rolled down to his knees in the heat. I saw his sleek black hair had grown down to touch his ears, and was no longer sleek,
but breaking out into curled ends. Someone must have given him orders
to shave: dark stubble patched his jaw.
His hand came up, fingers hooking under the smooth iron of his collar.
In the clear light from the cabin window it was possible to read ::I am owned by Ilario:: engraved in Venetian script.
‘Ramiro?’
‘I have to . . . ’ His head came up.
For a stark heartbeat I wondered, Should I call Honorius’s men?
Ramiro Carrasco bent down, awkwardly, on one knee and then the
next, until he was kneeling in front of me.
‘Get up!’ I must sound shrill, I realised.
‘ Please.’ The Iberian hunched into himself. His face showed a shining
pink where the stubble did not grow. His fingers locked into each other.
‘Please, I’m begging you – slaves beg, don’t they? Please. Ilario -
mistress—’
I shot a glance at the inner door; Tottola was not visible. He would be
alertly listening. Judging whether to guard Onorata or myself first.
Flushing as red as Carrasco, fully as embarrassed, I hissed, ‘Stand up!
What is this about?’
His head lifted.
I saw a vestige of Ramiro Carrasco de Luis in Venice in the jut of his
jaw. His hands shook where he clenched them together. All of his body
where he knelt down on the war-junk’s deck had a faint shiver to it.
I grabbed him by the shoulders of his tunic and hauled, not caring that
I heard fabric tear. All but throwing him up off the deck and onto his
feet, I spat out, ‘You don’t kneel to me!’
He stared wildly.
Too used to thinking of ‘Ilaria’, with a woman’s strength.
I stepped forward and he automatically stepped back, stopping only as
his spine came into hard contact with the ship’s hull beside the outer
door.
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He blurted out, ‘You have to kill me!’
‘ What? ’
Attila’s voice sounded from the deck outside. ‘Need any help?’
I stretched across Carrasco to open the outer door.
The German man-at-arms leaned up against the door-frame, appa-
rently casual. I had seen him draw his blade in a heartbeat from just such
a stance.
‘What a way to li
ve a life!’ I muttered, saw him grin with feral teeth, and nodded politely. ‘I’ll shout if I need anything.’
Attila returned the nod. I believed he chose to view me a male at such
moments: a man, who of course would need little assistance with
Carrasco.
I pushed the door closed as Attila placed his back to it.
‘Now.’ I stared at Ramiro Carrasco without moving away from him.
‘What is this?’
He stood as if the hull held him up. ‘You have to kill me.’
‘ Kill you?’
In the port’s clear light, his skin had an unhealthy shine. Ochre and
green, if I had to choose pigments. Lines cut deeply into his face, and
could have been dehydration, or pain, or fear, or all those things.
I shook my head, and pointed at a low stool. ‘Sit.’
Ramiro Carrasco looked uncertain. I recognised that. The slave does
not sit before the master.
I am doing you no favours, if you ever pass to another master, I reflected.
The unlikelihood of that circumstance made me feel a little better. I
indicated the stool again. ‘Do as I say.’
He collapsed onto the lacquered and padded stool as if his legs folded
up under him. His eyes did not leave my face.
‘Why would I kill you?’ Exasperation sharpened my voice to high
tenor; I dragged it downward. ‘Carrasco. If I wanted you dead, I
wouldn’t have bought you in Venice!’
He began slowly to rub his hands over his arms. For all the heat, I
could see the fine black hairs at his wrists standing up on gooseflesh.
‘This ship is going to Taraconensis.’
No question in his tone. Keeping any rumour from a ship’s crew is a
lost cause, but Carrasco in any case might know the Balearic coasts by
sight.
He raised his head. Luminous eyes showed rawly accessible pain,
hatred, fear. ‘You have to kill me. Because otherwise I’ll betray you.’
I could not doubt the shaking honesty in his tone.
‘Why would you tell me about it?’
‘So that you can order your men – if I’m within Lord Videric’s reach—’
Ramiro Carrasco stuttered over the Aldra’s name. ‘He’ll find out that I’m here. Once we sail into Taraco . . . He’ll threaten my family. He’ll
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offer me what he can give me, but he’ll threaten them, and he owns
them!’
He spoke in Iberian, clearly forgetting in his desperation that Attila
and Tottola were both the other side of thin doors. He made fists of his
hands, clenching them so hard that his nails must break the skin in a
minute.
‘What can Videric offer you?’ I hesitated. ‘You wouldn’t trust him to offer you freedom?’
Ramiro’s mouth curved a little, only at one side. I recall that ironic
smile from Venice, when this dishevelled man was Federico’s sleek
secretary.
I do not expect to feel empathy for the man who would have killed me—
‘Freedom after a fashion.’ Carrasco shrugged. ‘He’ll offer me a quick
death.’
I stared.
‘He’ll offer to keep my family safe,’ he said, ‘and he’ll offer to give me
what I’d promise, if I were him – a quick execution, to spare me the judicial torture of a slave, or being left to die after some ambush with my
guts hanging out.’
He bit at his lip, and rose awkwardly to his feet as if he could not bear
to be sitting while I stood. We were much of a height.
Slaves on their own – as, among foreigners like these Chin-men – have
no acquaintance to confide in. Only too much time to think.
This is what Ramiro Carrasco has been thinking, over the cradle of my
child.
‘You want me to order your death, instead?’
His face crumpled in a way an adult man’s should not.
‘I want you to save my family! If I’m dead, then there’s no reason for
him to harm them!’
I cut him short with a cruel truth. ‘Videric may make an example of
them. To convince the men he uses as spies after you.’
Ramiro Carrasco wiped a hand over his face. He sweated now, but not
from the humid heat. Bitterness and desperation sounded in his voice.
‘I’m already your slave. One day you’ll punish me for assaulting you in
Venice. Why not make it now? I’ll beg for punishment. But you have to
keep me away from Taraco—’
‘Christus! No. Stop embarrassing yourself!’
I wanted to shake him. I dared not touch him.
Because he is my slave, and no man can stop me if I whip the skin off
his back.
Or if I kill him.
Ramiro Carrasco looked at me with sheer desperation. ‘I accept I am your slave. In God’s name, do something, because I can’t!’
A man cannot be watched all day, every day.
If Ramiro Carrasco de Luis feels driven enough by this to kill himself,
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what will drive him is the contrast between the free man of Venice and
the slave. There is no action he can take against the situation he is in. I
have cause to know how fear is strongest then.
Carrasco let out a sound that was both sigh and groan. With one
ragged swift movement, he drove his fist against the wooden wall: a loud
crack echoed around the cabin.
‘ No—’ I waved Attila away as the blond man-at-arms swung the door
open again. ‘Leave us!’
The door clicked shut.
I held my hand out. ‘Let me see that.’
Carrasco’s fingers felt cold in mine. Blood welled out of the scrapes on
his knuckles.
Manipulating the joints with my thumbs got a suppressed grunt out of
him, but I felt no unusual movement of bone under my pressure.
I wish I might get the flayed image of the Royal Mathematicians’
autopsy from my mind to paper. I do not desire to know what the living
flesh is like under the skin. Or how easily a man may be flayed alive,
rather than dead.
But the truth is, my charcoal drawings of hands have been better since
then.
Ramiro Carrasco muttered, ‘What can a slave say to a master that’s
honest? You’re right. Send me off to be beaten; have done with it!’
‘So you can jump over the ship’s rail?’
‘No!’
He trod on my words far too quickly.
I pushed his hand back towards him. He flexed it, looking down;
unkempt black hair falling into his eyes.
He did not look at me. ‘Perhaps I wish you to believe I would do that.’
Men take their most stupid actions in such undecided passionate
states.
‘Sit.’ I pointed at the low stool.
Returning to my sack for paper and a stub of charcoal, I saw in
peripheral vision how he sank slowly down onto the stool again, never
taking his eyes off me.
Long experience as a slave has me used to judging men, sometimes
even accurately. But I read neither souls nor minds; I doubted I could
read in him whether he was honest or not, with me or with himself.
I may know better after this.
I pulled up a second stool, sat down, and began sketching, with paper
and board across my knee.
Sitting for me was calming him, I realised.
It’s a familiar routine.
‘Vide
ric can threaten you again.’
‘Yes.’ The light didn’t alter on his luminous brown eyes.
‘He may have imprisoned your family as hostages by now.’
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Eyes moving from his face to the paper, I knew him aware of that. I
need not say Videric may also have sent in his soldiers to fire and burn
the villages. A man can drive his serfs off his own estates, if he wishes. Or
kill them. No one speaks for them; in law they’re property.
‘I know so little.’ Ramiro shifted, meeting my eyes. ‘And I was of the
same kind as your Alexandrine – in possession of every fact and rumour.’
My chalk discovered the lines of frustration, anger, passion.
‘I could have killed you in Venice! If.’ He stopped dead.
I finished. ‘If you could have brought yourself to do it.’
He glared as if I had deeply insulted him. ‘You think I couldn’t kill
you?’
‘I think you’re the first man in your family to have a choice at anything
except digging dirt – and you chose the university of Barcelona and
training as a lawyer, not going for a soldier, like most farmer’s sons.’
I watched the pupils of his eyes widen.
‘I think Videric saw a man who could be blackmailed, and made a bad
error of judgement about what he could be blackmailed into. A man who
studies the law isn’t necessarily the best choice for a casual murderer.’ I
sketched the slackened flesh around his jaw. ‘Which leaves you caught
with nowhere to go. Not the best situation.’
He visibly struggled, and at last managed, ‘You’re not as rash as you
seem, are you?’
‘Possibly you mean “not as stupid as I look”? I don’t have to tell you –
a slave studies people. When anyone can do anything to you, you learn
to look.’
Ramiro Carrasco shot me a look, that I thought for the first time was not solely directed at ‘Madonna Ilaria’.
I remarked, ‘Only you would blush because I don’t think you’re a
murderer.’
Having reduced him to silenced confusion, I used the charcoal to
darken in the masses of his hair.
‘You will have heard—’ Because it could not be otherwise, travelling
with us. ‘—that we intend Videric to return to court, in his old rank and
position. If we succeed, that makes us safe.’ I caught his eye. ‘All of us.’
Abruptly his face creased. He gave me a look of sardonic scorn.
