by Mary Gentle
did. But . . . You could, perhaps, have been told of this last night, and . . .
forgotten during the celebrations?’
Drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, they call it. My head did feel as if I’d been drinking the beer they put down in pans for his mastiff, all the night the
fiddler plays. Truthfully, it was no large amount unless to an unseasoned
drinker. And my head was clear enough last night.
I forget nothing concerning my mother.
I bit at my lip. The small pain helped me focus. ‘There’s no
“meeting”. If Rosamunda thinks there is . . . But she’s not a fool, she
knows there may be agents of Carthage here! Why would she go –
Safrac, did either of them say where I was to meet her?’
My thoughts were a tumble of fears: Videric sending Ramiro Carrasco
on a murderer’s errand to Venice; the Carthaginian agent whose name I
never knew dying on Torcello Island; Hanno Anagastes’ armed guards
surrounding Aldro Rosamunda, putting her under arrest.
Frustrated, I protested, ‘There are too many rooms in this palace to
search!’
‘There’s a hall with a fountain,’ Safrac de Aguilar emerged from his
reverie and interrupted. ‘ That was where Aldra Videric said you were waiting for the lady Rosamunda, now.’
The breath went out of my chest, leaving ice and heat. A solid knot of
cramped muscle and lung.
The fall of silver water; the ringing fall of steel.
Clear in my mind as that day twelve months ago.
If she expected to meet me – yes, she would go to such a place.
‘You know the Egyptian, Rekhmire’?’ I barely waited for de Aguilar’s
assent. ‘Go and tell him what you heard. If not him, then Lord Honorius.
Tell them – to be cautious.’
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Safrac de Aguilar looked alarmed. ‘Where will you be, Ilario?’
‘Finding this hall with a fountain!’
For all his choked protests, he gave me brisk directions; and strode
away from me towards the palace’s guest-chambers.
I walked, because running attracts attention. If I ran out of the hall,
there are those who would follow. Noblemen’s sons, out of curiosity.
Guardsmen, wondering what the fuss is about. The women servants who
clean, who see everything and everybody.
But a preoccupied fast walk attracts little attention.
I should be thinking – planning—
I don’t even know what I expect him to do!
Videric has lied to her.
I don’t know why.
Breath hissed hot in my lungs. The gangways and stairs of Zheng He’s
ship had kept me fit. But I’d guessed wrong about the time: it was well
past noon. Gades’ heat as the sun burns around to the second half of the
day is nothing to be sprinting in.
Fifteen minutes at a pounding run, once out of the public eye up
corridors and down stairs, wondering if I had mistaken Aguilar’s
directions – and a stone colonnade opened up in welcome cool.
I slowed to a painful half-trot.
Think. Think what you can do—
Twelve months ago I walked another marble-floored corridor, with
Aldra Videric; his blue and white linen robe swirling at his heels as he strode.
The sound of a fountain reached me from an open hall ahead.
The sound of a slap, and the flat clatter of a second-rate dagger skittering across the marble floor—
What will he do? Sell her to Carthage’s highest bidder, because they
think they can make use of her? Then have one of Carrasco’s brothers
assassinate her on board the ship?
Ridiculous speculations made me feel as if my head would burst.
I could understand if he attacked me. What does he want with her?
And why is it I still think I should protect her?
Pain more agonising than the cramp in my ribs came from the
immediate realisation.
She wants me to forgive her.
But not for my sake. For hers.
Now that the cathedral penitence means no gossip will ever forget I
came out of her womb, she wants to appear magnanimously accepting of
her monstrous child.
But she would meet me secretly because, no matter what she pretends
in public, she is ashamed of me.
I slowed.
Heat bounced down the white walls from the clerestory windows, high
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above; a breeze barely penetrated. That was not the only reason I was
sweating.
How rash will Rekhmire’ say I’m being?
I thought it so clever to show Videric in pigment: ‘You love her but she
never loved you; never will.’ So clever—!
A coldness went through my body and made my hands heavy. My
fingers prickled. I thought desperately: No, Videric isn’t a stupid man, he
will have realised the truth before now. Years ago!
And you were the one who thought it so clever to push his face into it.
What might that provoke a man to do?
Sound caught my attention.
Movement?
This doorway was a round Roman arch, the keystones white, outlined
with gold paint. A beaded curtain hung down across the opening.
Kicking off my scandals, I padded over the cool tiles, silencing my
breathing.
The beads made an impenetrable barrier until I stood with my nose all
but touching them. Vision altered: I saw clearly through their blur into
the hall.
The fountains arced silver into the afternoon light, water spilling out of
a jug held by a marble nude.
Terracotta pots held plants. The scent of the place was subtle: moist
soil, green leaves . . . choked pipes.
I could see the textures of leaves, the patterns of edges; all things for
which – before now – I would have reached for my drawing-book. ‘Learn
to see,’ Masaccio said to me, one night in the taverna, his hand sketching
flawlessly by candle-light. ‘You see too much detail, Ilario. You draw it
all. And you give it all the same importance. Look to see what parts of a
thing are necessary: show only that.’
Now all I could do was stare through the blurry green and shimmering
silver at Videric.
He knelt beside Rosamunda, where she lay supine on the floor.
His hands moved, busy at her mouth. Tying something.
A gag.
Light through the fretwork stone ceiling shone down on pillars and
fountain-basins. And glistened off her eyes as she blinked.
Christus Imperator, she’s still alive!
Three or four other men stood behind Videric where he knelt. They
wore the livery of guards. There were no household badges on arm or
cap. Evidently they waited for orders.
Rekhmire’ will be behind me, sooner or later.
I swept the bead curtain clattering aside, and strode into the hall.
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There’s no blood.
It was the first thing I noted. No blood; no broken bones protruding
through stretched-white skin. A slave learns how to see the crucial things
in the first instant.
An absent part of my mind wondered, Is that what Masaccio meant about an artist’s vision?
Her wrists and ankles were already bound; she squirmed and
whimpered in an attempt to get free of Videric’s hands. Two red bruises
<
br /> marked the sides of her jaw, where a thumb and forefinger might have
gripped her. Nothing more. Her silk robes were rucked up about her
knees, but clearly from struggling against being subdued, rather than
rape. Sweat beaded across her unlined forehead. She strained against her
arms, tied before her; Videric looked up from binding her kerchief into
her mouth with silk rope.
Looked directly at me.
One of the other men started forward.
‘Wait.’ Videric spoke with a quiet intensity that froze the man where
he stood.
I stared squarely down at Videric. ‘I didn’t know how vindictive you
could be. But you can let her go now, since you’ve got me here.’
His face altered. If his control had not been perfect, it would have been
a smile. He murmured, ‘Nor did I know that you thought the world
centred upon you.’
‘Don’t be naive.’ I thought it the surest way to shake him. ‘ Everybody
thinks that.’
Videric turned his head as if I didn’t exist. His attention focused on
Rosamunda, on the floor. The small choked sound he made would not
have carried as far as the guards wearing his livery.
The men were all much similar: Iberian, rather than Visigoth
Carthaginian; middle-aged soldiers in doublet and hose, with riding-
boots fastened up to their belts, and no surcoat over their mail hauberks.
No crest, no coat of arms, no insignia. Nothing to link them to Videric’s
estates.
The glances between them told me they were his. I have seen similar
looks between Honorius and Orazi.
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‘What’s the matter? Do you need four men here to kill me? Can’t you
do your own murders?’
Videric’s expression didn’t change. I didn’t expect it; he’s too good a
politician to allow that. But I caught the glance one of the men-at-arms
shot at his captain. It wasn’t, ‘Damn, Ilario knows!’ It was, ‘You didn’t say you were asking that of us.’
If he really doesn’t want revenge on me, when it’s freely offered—
I must have made him desire her death.
If he’s off-balance, I may find out more. I nodded at the soldiers,
speaking with a hope of keeping Videric unsettled. ‘Men in a jealous rage
don’t usually bring four witnesses. If you’re not killing my mother, what
are you doing to her?’
The Aldra Videric smiled appreciatively. He glanced up and back, at
his captain. ‘A shame there’s not room for two . . . ’
The man-at-arms smiled as one does at a lord’s joke.
‘Whatever you’re doing to her—’ I kept moving, coming closer to him,
and Rosamunda, every moment. ‘—why aren’t you doing it to me? I
don’t believe the – the man who told me about this “meeting” I’m
supposedly having with my mother is one of your pawns. But since I’m
here . . . why not kill me instead?’
The sun falling through the lattice-patterned ceiling made Videric’s
fair hair and beard glint. He came lightly up onto his feet, as if he were
my age, and shrugged. ‘Why not you? Honorius. And Alexandria, to a degree. You have powerful friends that make killing you unwise. Even an
accident would be suspect.’
‘But not for her?’ I didn’t look down as I reached Rosamunda. The
toes of my studded sandals touched the shoulder of her robe. I looked at
him across my mother’s body. ‘She has no powerful friends herself that
aren’t also your friends. So there’s nothing to stop you.’
Videric laughed.
It caught halfway through, as if it snagged on something in his throat.
‘I’m not killing her.’ The Aldra Videric rubbed the cuff of his robe
across his red lips. For the first time in years, he seemed to see me – to
see Ilario, rather than the King’s slave, or his wife’s secret bastard. ‘And
now you’re here, I suppose not you either . . . Not everything is about
murder, Ilario.’
He looked at me with sardonic humour, as if he couldn’t understand
why I didn’t smile in return.
The time will come when I don’t hear the word ‘murder’ and see
Masaccio’s face in front of me, throat crushed in front of my eyes. But
not today.
‘Is it my fault? Did what I painted make you do this?’
The hall was silent except for the strained, muffled breathing of
Rosamunda. And the noises she made in her throat.
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I did not need to hear words to know she intended ‘ Yes: your fault: free me! ’
Videric’s captain was a new face since I’d left Taraco; I didn’t
recognise him, but he had in-country features, and he was a little
younger than the other soldiers. Recently promoted, I guessed. He would
be a man loyal to Videric, who had been taught to blame me for his lord’s
initial forced resignation as First Minister.
The captain turned his head towards Aldra Videric, plainly requesting
orders. Kill the intruder? Subdue it?
For three heartbeats, I was dizzy with the realisation that, had I been a
slave still, stepping into this room would have been immediate suicide.
I flinched, momentarily. Two of the men-at-arms exchanged glances,
cheered by that. The hermaphrodite isn’t the knight it was trained to be was plain in their thoughts.
Videric made a gesture with his hand.
The clink and spatter of fountain-water did not drown out boots on
the tiles. The men-at-arms went to take up stations at the remaining
archways. I might escape if I spun around and dived back the way I
came. But I wouldn’t bet money.
And I’m not leaving.
Holding Videric’s gaze, I sank down on one knee by Rosamunda.
Peripheral vision gave me the ability to pull at the knots of her silk gag.
Videric quite deliberately made no move from where he stood. He
turned the palms of his hands to me, to emphasise that he held no
weapons. I wondered if he knew that it seemed to make him appear
defenceless in other ways.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said, ‘Wait.’
‘“Wait.”’ I sounded like every speculative, unbelieving courtier I ever
met in Rodrigo’s court.
‘Hear me out, first. Then . . . ’ He sighed and shrugged. Not quite
‘your folly be on your own head’, but something with more sorrow and
resignation in than I was used to hearing from my step-father.
He’ll tell you what you want to hear.
This man who lied, a year ago, about Rosamunda desiring to see me.
When it was his own orders that she wait and kill me.
He looks different.
I’d paid attention to him physically, painting him in the new style.
Masaccio taught me ratios: the placing of the eye according to the
position of ears, jaw, nose. Given Masaccio’s emphasis that first a painter
needs to see – and wanting to understand him – I had studied my
stepfather as lines, planes, shades, edges . . .
As a man, Videric looks older than when I left Taraco, and tired
enough that he might not have slept for days.
I said abruptly, ‘You painted your face for the cathedral!’
Videric rubbed at his lower lip again. ‘It was necessary to look as a
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man should. Women are not the only ones to mimic health with cosmetic
aid.’
I knelt down on the tiles, lifting Rosamunda’s head and resting it
against my thighs, so that I could support her shoulders with my knees.
She stirred, moaning; and looked frantically at me. It felt appalling,
unbearable, to see the silk biting into the corners of her lips.
I stroked her soft, braided black hair. The weight of her head was
heavy in my lap, and I wondered for a dazed moment if the embroidery
on my Alexandrine tunic would leave its pattern embossed in her fine
skin.
‘Tell me what this is about.’ I couldn’t keep urgency out of my tone. If
Rekhmire’ is following, I need to have heard this first. ‘And – let me untie her wrists. Please. She’s hurting, and she can’t escape, can she?’
Videric smoothed down the folds of his striped linen robe, his features
composed in the look of a thoughtful statesman. I recognised it as a mask
he often wore in council. Eventually, after my breath congealed and
burned in my chest, he gave a casual nod.
Reaching down, I picked at the bindings where I could reach them
while supporting her. She made a pained noise through the gag.
Videric seemed in no hurry.
The Ilario who left Taraco a year ago would have run to this meeting
without a pause to tell anyone where I’d gone. The same way I left
Taraco; the same way I sought out Rosamunda in Carthage.
The silk rope settled into tight, impenetrable knots under my
fingertips.
Videric seated himself on the broad marble rim of the fountain beside
me. His hand dipped in. He flicked sour water over his neck, cooling
himself.
I craned my neck, from where I knelt by his feet.
Videric looked down at me. ‘The problem . . . is Carthage.’
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17
I stared. And spoke into a silence broken only by the spatter of water on
marble:
‘Carthage?’
Videric’s captain stepped forward from the archway. I had not seen
any order pass between him and Videric. The soldier bent over behind
me, reaching around to unbuckle the belt from which I hung my dagger.
Still holding Videric’s gaze, I didn’t move. Leather pulled against the
fabric of my tunic; I felt the weight of the weapon go missing.
