by Mary Gentle
crammed it under the palliasse.
This is not the Empty Chair, or the Most Serene, or the city of the
Pharaoh in exile. This is not Carthage – Although I am under a penitence of sorts, I found myself thinking, and smiled crookedly in the dark.
It was the kind of irony Ramiro Carrasco would have liked, when he
was a sardonic lawyer and not a slave.
They ought at least to send Carrasco to me here, a time or two; it would cheer him up to see me in sackcloth and ashes . . .
A voice outside the studded oak door of the hermit’s cell said, ‘Ilario?’
Yellow light glinted through the iron grate set into the door. An oil-
lamp or a candle; oil by the smell.
The voice was for one dumb-struck moment strange to me, and
then—
‘ Father Felix? ’
‘May I come in? They’ve sent me to instruct you.’
‘Yes.’ I said it before I thought. ‘Yes, of course, Father!’
He had to duck almost double to get under the low lintel. The builders
had left a ledge against the far wall, where the masonry was set deep;
Father Felix put his lantern on the earthen floor with a muttered prayer,
swept his green robes around him, and seated himself. He gazed directly
at me.
He looks no different, I thought.
It only seems a decade since I left Taraco; in reality it is only ten or eleven months.
Father Felix’s copper-brown features showed as strong as ever,
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illuminated under his hood; his astonishing pale grey eyes looked
through me as much as they ever used to.
‘The bishop wishes me to prepare you for the fourth and fifth stations
of the exomologesis.’ He leaned forward, and his fingers felt warm
against my forehead as he brushed my hair back. ‘Ilario, are you all
right?’
‘I haven’t practised fasting this year, so I’m unused to it.’ I could only
stare at him. ‘Father . . . ’
No man had ever known Father Felix’s name outside the church, or
his origins; all he would tell me was that he had travelled from beyond
the lands of the Turk, beyond the Caucasus mountains. Seeing him with
new eyes, I suddenly wondered if he would know more of Zheng He’s
land than the rest of us.
When this is done, I will persuade him to take word to Honorius, and bring news back to me.
‘Tertullian,’ Father Felix said, in a measured tone.
The black pupils in his grey eyes expanded in the dim lantern light.
‘Tertullian instructs us that exomologesis is the discipline which
obliges a man to prostrate and humiliate himself, so as to draw down
God’s mercy. You’ve performed three of the stations. Tomorrow, you
take your place as one of the substrati, as Gregory Thaumaturgus defines
it; prostrating yourself where you were kneeling today. The bishop will
lay his hand on you and bless you. The day after tomorrow, on the final
day, you’ll act as one of the consistentes, and be allowed to be present to
hear Mass. Then you come forward to the altar, recite a psalm and
litany, and beg forgiveness of the man you’ve wronged.’
My stomach rolled over.
Father Felix continued, ‘The King and the bishops and this man you
have offended will hold a concilium, there and then, to determine if you
deserve re-admission and pardon. And if so, you will be led around the
cathedral carrying a lighted candle, prayers will be said, and you will be
given public absolution. And the kiss of peace, by Aldra Videric.’
His voice altered on the last word.
‘Felix . . . ’ I sought desperately for words. For some reason
Rekhmire’’s prayer-box came into my mind’s eye: I wondered if he was
praying to Kek and Amunet and the rest of the Eight tonight, in Videric’s
provincial fortress. ‘Should I do this?’
Felix’s robes were coarse homespun wool, dyed the colour of hedge-
weeds. I suspected they were the same robes he had worn when I left last
year, faded through many washings. His dark hands were the hands of a
workman, if you looked at them apart from the rest of him.
‘If your desire for pardon is in any way not genuine, I would need to
inform the bishops.’ He held my gaze with more ease than most men.
‘Tomorrow they’ll smear wood-ash on your forehead, and dress you in
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coarse yellow linen. If you’re not truly penitent, that’s no more than a
play-actor’s costume. You can’t insult God that way.’
I read the implied And I won’t allow it without difficulty, knowing Father Felix as long as I have.
It never occurred to me – that as well as begging pardon of my stepfather Videric, I might have to mean it!
I delayed directly answering. ‘Aldra Videric will be there on the last
day?’
‘Lord Videric arrived tonight. He will be in the cathedral tomorrow, as
well as on the last day.’
Did he have an Egyptian spy with him!
No way to ask that question.
I drew up my knees where I sat on the thin mattress. The chill of the
earth permeated through the straw. Linking my arms around my shins, I
was at least grateful that the penitential shirt came down far enough to
cover me to the knees.
I said, ‘I very much want to ask pardon of Videric.’
Since that was true, I hoped it would sound true. Even if the reason for
it isn’t what Felix would think of as the correct one.
I shifted as my empty belly rumbled, and watched Father Felix’s
expression. ‘I have a child, Father.’
Slowly, he smiled. It altered his face beyond belief. ‘God has blessed
you, then.’
‘I’m still what I was. A man’s body and a woman’s body. Will the
church re-admit a hermaphrodite?’
I had been five or six when it occurred to me that the rags the peasants
tied on bushes at sacred wells and springs didn’t alter their lives in any perceptible way. Valdamerca kept me in the women’s section of the
church at our estate, and I paid attention after that, and concluded this
was much the same business as well-fairies and forest ghosts. The two-
year-long argument over whether I could be permitted to attend Mass
with King Rodrigo’s household, therefore, had both taken me by surprise
and completely bewildered me.
I suspected Felix knew that. He had argued fiercely for me to take
communion. If a God as kind as the one Felix believed in had existed in
this world, I would have resented the debate about my soul considerably
more.
He ignored my question. ‘Is your desire for pardon genuine?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘You have done wrong, you have caused great wrong, to the Aldra
Videric, and you humbly wish him to pardon you?’
The night felt cool, after the heat of the day, but my cheeks were hot.
Father Felix watched me blush, himself apparently unmoved.
‘You have to let me do this!’ I said.
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‘Perjure yourself in court if you wish, Ilario, but not before God’s face.
And not before the altar in this church.’
Reaching out for his long-fingered hand, I knelt up on the straw
mattress.
‘Father, you go back and tell the bishops that this is right. If you
don’t,
my family are in danger, the King is in danger, Carthage will take control
of this country, and I guarantee that we’ll be in a war with the Franks within two years. If God doesn’t want towns burned and men
slaughtered and women raped, then God will let me lay at Videric’s feet
and beg his pardon!’
Father Felix’s hand felt cool. His skin glowed a dark hue on the back,
where I could see tendons shifting under the skin. A pale gold for the
creased palm.
Slowly, he brought his other hand up to grip mine.
It had not occurred to me before I left Taraco that Father Felix stands
a head shorter than I do, and is wiry rather than strong. If I had
Honorius’s grasp of military necessity, I might put my hand around
Felix’s throat until he choked into unconsciousness, and claim the old
man had a fit.
But even Honorius knows I have no ability to do that.
‘Do you want me to lie to God, Ilario?’
‘No, just to His bishops!’
Father Felix’s lips formed a firm line.
I knew he would be thinking, with that keen mind of his; what I
couldn’t predict was how differently he might value things, having the
faith in his God that he did.
‘Rodrigo knows of this,’ he mused.
‘Yes.’
‘If His Majesty hasn’t informed the bishops, he presumably trusts in
your – quite genuine penitence – to convince them.’ Felix’s pale eyes
flickered a gaze at me, and then he resumed staring at our interlocked
hands. ‘Well . . . pride is a sin. And I shouldn’t be proud enough to think
I know better than the men of God in concilium. If God objects to you, Ilario, I think He’s quite capable of making that plain to them at the
appropriate time.’
He squeezed my hand and let it go, his knuckles like a bagful of jack-
stones.
‘Have you done anything you’re ashamed of while you’ve been away,
Ilario?’
‘Yes.’ My face was hot again, I found.
‘Then I suggest you use this as an opportunity to ask God to forgive
you for those things. Do you wish to confess them to me?’
The secrecy of the confessional might have been broken in the past,
but not by men such as Father Felix.
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I knelt on the packed earth floor and let him take me through
antiphons and responses.
He gave me a searching look, as if I were both taller and older than he
had expected. ‘And what is it you’re ashamed of?’
Dutifully, I said, ‘I gave way to the lusts of the flesh, Father.’
‘And you are sorry?’
His pale gaze made me shift a little, then. I reached for a pat lie, and
could only find honesty. ‘It brought me my child. So . . . I don’t regret it.’
‘Then what is it you do feel shame over?’
Masaccio’s death. Paying money to own Ramiro Carrasco de Luis,
and enjoying the power that gave me over the man. Exulting in the talent
that made Masaccio call me in to paint the golem – although that could
not be directly mentioned. I spoke in general terms of pride.
‘And I’ve taken too much money from my – family.’ I changed the
word from father at the last moment. ‘I owe a debt there—’
‘Families should support each other.’ Felix looked a little puzzled, as
well he might, supposing that I must be talking about the absent Federico
and Valdamerca. ‘You would do the same for them, wouldn’t you?’
I thought of the unlikelihood of the retired Captain-General of Castile
needing support from me, and smiled. ‘Yes. Of course.’
‘The man you own as a slave: he attempted to kill you?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And you have forgiven him.’
‘I trust him not to do it again,’ I said grimly, and caught a slight smile
on Father Felix’s face. The perigrinati christus never smiled often. I must have looked puzzled.
‘Has this man atoned, in your eyes?’ Father Felix asked.
‘I . . . Yes.’ It startled me to find that true.
‘Then it was not wrong to have bought him. Although you should free
him as soon as possible. No matter what the law and the Old Testament
say, I cannot believe that owning a man is good and right.’
The situation that kept Ramiro Carrasco in his collar couldn’t be
explained, and I didn’t try. I talked to Father Felix of minor sins, finding
more comfort in his voice and presence than in anything he might be
saying. It was not until the lantern had almost burned out of oil, and he
asked me for the last time if I had sins unconfessed, that something burst
out of me:
‘Is it a sin to hate your father and mother?’
Father Felix steepled his fingers on his chest, looked me up and down,
and slowly shook his head – not answering my question, I saw, but in a
general negation.
‘The scriptures would say so.’
‘What would you say? Father Felix?’
‘I’d say I don’t have answers for you, Ilario. Much as you always
wished to believe I might. Is it wrong?’
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I thought of Videric, my mother’s husband, whom I will have to see
tomorrow. And keep silent about so much.
I thought of Rosamunda, my mother – whose presence or absence I
haven’t asked after, because how can I bear either? The thought that she
could see me subjected to this, or the thought that she could stay away?
I looked up from the floor at Father Felix. Eyes adjusted to the almost-
dark, I could see every line of his sixty-year-old face. I desired
desperately to paint him in the style of the New Art: recognisably Felix,
perigrinati christus of Taraconensis.
‘It’s wrong.’ I shrugged, half desperate. ‘It’s corrosive. Like sublimates
in an alchemist’s workshop. I only feel contempt for him. I hate her so
much that it’ll burn me away.’
He didn’t ask me for names. ‘And are you guiltless towards these
people, yourself?’
This time I shook my head in confusion. ‘You know I can’t be,
Father.’
‘Spend your time in the cathedral meditating on that, then. I believe,
as I believe in God Himself, that this will be of more use to your soul than any amount of grovelling in ashes.’
Even qualified relief went through me and lightened me, as if my body
could float. I answered his small smile with one of my own.
‘I have to do the grovelling in any case. But I’ll take your advice,
Father. Will you be present?’
He looked up from preparing to give me blessing, if not absolution.
‘That’s as you prefer. My duties don’t compel me to it, but they don’t
keep me from it, either.’
‘Don’t come.’ I couldn’t make myself say anything less honest.
‘Neither day. It’ll be easier for me if I don’t have to speak knowing you’re
there – and I do have to do this.’
Father Felix nodded.
‘I think I understand why. Bless you, Ilario. Here. Take these.’
He stooped and picked up the lantern, muttering a little as the
streaming heat caught his fingers, and got it into a safe grip.
His other hand, in the dark, pushed at me half a dozen sheets o
f folded
blank paper, that recognisably came from the scriptorium, and two
broken ends of chalks.
Videric wasn’t there on the fourth day.
Nor Rosamunda.
Nor Rekhmire’.
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10
Slaves are used to being on their knees in the presence of other men. But
this is different – is intended, primarily rather than secondarily, to be
humiliating.
Humbling, I thought. Ashes are no dirtier than a woman gets cleaning
out hearths all day. I’ve worn coarser shirts working with King Rodrigo’s
horses in the royal stables. And wearing a shift that only comes down to
mid-thigh, when I know every eye in the cathedral watches me to see if
they can see a cock and balls under the hem, or women’s nipples and
breasts through the weave . . . That’s not so different from some days at
court, here.
But it is different.
My face burned: half of it shame, and half rage at the sheer injustice.
A decision must have been made that to keep me from my child for
five nights was cruel. Attila and Tottola brought her to the hermit’s cell
beforehand for a very few minutes, in the hour when other men would
break their fasts. She whimpered. I touched her warm skin, murmured in
her ear, and found her unharmed and well cared for.
The two soldiers had four priests with them, solemn faced, not
permitting any word to be spoken; not even a greeting and a farewell.
Tottola smiled at me. Attila looked intense.
I put my hands inside Onorata’s linen shirt and blanket to find out
why she grizzled, and encountered the hard nub of folded paper.
There was enough light when they left with her for me to puzzle out
the words – the scribe’s hand of Ramiro Carrasco. But my father
Honorius’s unmistakable irascible tone:
‘The damn book-buyer’s back. Persuaded me I can’t be there tomorrow. He says, Chances are, anyway, you’ll have more parents there than you know what to do with.’
This is supposed to humble, I thought. But how can it do anything except make a man proud?
Being at the centre of all this attention, as the sinner is.
Polyphonic voices echoed out from the great heights of the cathedral
roof; like bells, organs, great waterfalls of sound. The reverberations
struck me under the breastbone. I trembled. If I had had to walk, I might
