The Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  ‘If it comes to it, I’m perfectly capable of embezzling the funds of any Alexandrine House,’ the Egyptian said, as if it were not only obvious but sensible. ‘However. I strongly suggest we don’t let it come to that.’

  He exchanged a glance with Honorius, as if both of them could come to a conclusion without words.

  ‘Let the weather improve.’ Honorius grumbled. ‘Give it a few months for the child to thrive. I’ll sail to Alexandria with you. Then, when you’re safe, Ilario, I’ll sort out Rodrigo Sanguerra.’

  ‘Honorius.’ Breathing deeply gave me some control. ‘I read what Hanulf wrote, and I know what the King dictated to him. I worked for Rodrigo Sanguerra for nearly a decade. I know the man. He won’t wait!’

  Honorius smiled, lines spidering his face at the mouth and eyes. ‘Let’s sit, eat. Discuss this like sensible men. You can protest how you like, Ilario. I won’t leave Venice while you need me.’

  ‘Damn it—!’

  The rest of the discussion was as fruitless as any I have ever had with a noble of King Rodrigo’s court set on going his own way–and being a freed slave rather than the King’s Freak did not appear to help me in the slightest.

  Gazing at Honorius while he ate delicate flakes of white fish as if they were about to give way to famine, I thought, Even his affection might fade if acknowledging me ends by robbing him of everything he’s earned in his life.

  My body had returned to as normal a state as I thought it now could achieve, and I was watching Onorata blink sleepily at the spring sunshine from her cradle when Neferet bustled her way into the ground-floor room that looked out into the courtyard, an expostulating Rekhmire’ and Honorius in her wake.

  ‘Ilaria!’ She had not given up calling me by a female name, as most of the household inhabitants had when not outside in Venice itself. ‘Ilaria, I need your help.’

  I have been your guest: that imposes obligations. I shot a look at the two men behind Neferet, who were both yelling loudly enough that I could understand what neither was saying. Obligations, but not without caution.

  ‘What do you need?’ I asked, standing up, my fingers resting on the wooden hood of the cradle.

  ‘The Council of Ten are holding Leon’s trial tomorrow.’

  Neferet’s face was lean, tight, intense. She fixed me with brown-black eyes, and what I thought was a flush under her reddish skin. ‘They’ll torture him; I know he’ll be executed, because he won’t say…anything.’

  I wanted to interrupt with some commiseration or sympathy; she didn’t permit it.

  ‘His family have disowned him,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s not worth their while to sink with him, is what they mean! I spoke to his father–no matter. We have to do something tomorrow–I have to–you have to help me!’

  The Frankish season of Lent was on the house: I didn’t suffer from diet restrictions, since I’d had to regain my health after the birth, but I felt the abstinence going on all around me, and had abandoned wine for the time. That was a mistake, I thought. I have a feeling I could do with a flask of Falernian right about now.

  ‘What?’ I began.

  ‘He’ll be convicted. Sentenced.’ Neferet’s eyes seemed to gleam in her intense face. ‘I can’t do anything about that: the gods they know I’ve tried! But he’s bound to be sentenced to execution. I need…I would do this myself, but it’s the one thing I can’t do. I can’t do it.’

  She shook her head. She looked oddly dignified for a moment, the spring sun showing up every line worry had cut into her soft face over the past weeks.

  ‘I can’t think of any plea of leniency they might listen to, except this.’ She stepped forward, reached out, took my hand, and closed her other hand over my knuckles. ‘I need you to go to the Doge’s palace tomorrow, and plead for his life.’

  ‘Me?’

  Neferet made an impatient sound. In the doorway, Rekhmire’ and Honorius fell silent. My father’s mouth was a white line. The Egyptian had his arms crossed firmly across his chest.

  ‘You.’ Neferet looked down the inch or two of height she had on me, into my face. ‘You have to go to them, and plead your belly.’

  5

  If I stared as incoherently as I felt, it was no wonder she began to speak in slow, plain words, as if to a village idiot.

  ‘Tell them this is Leon’s child.’ She jerked her chin toward the cradle, never taking her eyes off my face. ‘Tell them he visited Tommaso Cassai in Rome. And seduced you, while he was there. You followed him here, pretending to be a widow. It’s why you’re here. You need a father for your child. You need them to commute the sentence from execution. It doesn’t matter to what. Anything, so long as he lives! We can aid him later. But you have to go there and do this for him; it’s the thing that I can’t do.’

  Rekhmire’ came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

  She didn’t let go of my hand.

  I could see the man under her disguise–or the false pale body that held her female ka, as she would say. She stood with a kind of exhausted, humiliated dignity, gazing down at me.

  If I didn’t much like her, still, pain for her wrenched through my belly.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘I won’t have you put yourself into danger!’

  Honorius and I spoke at the same time.

  Rekhmire’’s great hand tightened on the shoulder of Neferet’s long Alexandrine robe. His grave dark gaze met mine.

  ‘You can take your father’s armed escort,’ Rekhmire’ said. ‘No man would think the less of you, not after you were attacked by a madman.’

  The last few words let me know what story had been given out about Ramiro Carrasco’s attempt to murder me.

  Honorius glared. ‘I don’t like it! The boy Leon–nice enough boy–wouldn’t have him in a company of mine, and the world doesn’t need more lawyers–but I’m not risking my son-daughter for him!’

  His protectiveness made me smile. It’s frightening, because I’m not used to it, and what one learns to value, it may pain one to lose. But it still made me warm.

  Freeing my hands, I bent over the cradle and picked up Onorata. She had grown, but she was still smaller than any new-born should be. I slid my finger over her palm, and she made an infinitesimally tiny sound and closed her small perfect fingers on me.

  ‘I haven’t taken her out of the house,’ I said.

  Honorius erupted into a fine amount of oratory, Rekhmire’ speculated about what Alexandrine physicians might advise, and Neferet said nothing at all. She continued to look at me.

  I have seen the expression before, on slaves’ faces, before they break down and beg.

  Hurriedly, I said, ‘We’ll take the midwife. And…your Father Azadanes?’ Who, privately, I thought would be of more use to Neferet as a friend than to me as a Green priest. ‘And the wet-nurse. And the soldiers.’

  My father gave me a furious look.

  Knowing him, I knew that Neferet’s distress had already lost him the argument he would still have with me.

  I looked from Honorius to Rekhmire’–the Egyptian’s expression heavy with thoughts I shared–and then at Neferet. ‘You do know how small a chance this is, don’t you?’

  The Alexandrine eunuch dressed as a woman gave me that inclination of the head that, outside of Frankish lands, passes as a bow.

  ‘I know,’ Neferet said. ‘Nonetheless.’

  The great medieval palace of the Doges was in the process of being demolished–rather, demolished and re-built–so I spent my time leading us between scaffolding-covered walls, and treading close enough to the heels of the Doge’s soldier that I wouldn’t lose him as he led us inside. Every so often I looked inside the fold of my cloak to find Onorata still breathing.

  No love connected us, but I would wake two or three times in the night, convinced she had died as she slept, and must crawl to the foot of my bed and look at her in her chest-cot, and feel her breath against my finger, before I could go back to sleep.

 
; The Council guards escorted us into the main chamber of the Doge.

  They will see through me.

  The thought echoed through my head clearly enough to down out the ringing footsteps on the flagstones, and the echoes that came back from the Gothic vaults. I had no time to look at the ducal splendour of Foscari’s half-rebuilt palace, in the new Classical style. I could only think I will join Leon Battista Alberti in prison!

  I thought sardonically that I ought to have been barefoot, with my skirt hems worn to frays, and the baby in my arms wrapped in faded linen. That would make them believe the poor seduced woman come to get justice from her ravisher…

  Looking up, past the semi-circle of white-faced old men under Phrygian caps, all identical to me in this state of fear, I caught Leon Battista’s eye where he stood between four armed guards.

  His eyes bugged out of his head.

  ‘He’ll give it away!’ I muttered.

  Honorius gave me the same look he gave disobedient young recruits. ‘Steady.’

  On my other side–and I was beginning to wonder when they had constituted themselves my bookends–Rekhmire’ leaned on his crutch and suggested, ‘Will you take the baby?’

  Honorius spoke across me. ‘Not for a moment. Let them see us.’

  I might not be a grubby-faced ex-whore with snow on my feet and a baby in my arms, I reflected, wondering if I could paint that in any way that these rich fat men would believe.

  What they must see in front of them in this dark and torch-lit hall was a young woman in silks and satins, clearly of good family, her father in knight’s armour, her Egyptian scribe at her elbow, her armed escort clattering across the stone floor behind us, and the nursemaid with the child two formal paces to my rear.

  Like it or not, this stands more of a chance of presenting them a picture they’ll buy.

  ‘This is my daughter—’ Honorius stuttered over the word, in a way I’d never heard him stutter over ‘son-daughter’. ‘—Ilaria. I demand compensation for her! I demand justice!’

  All of the ten men at the council table looked at Honorius, except for the middle-aged man with alert brown eyes who took in my appearance in an instant, and slightly lifted a brow.

  ‘Messer Captain-General Honorius.’ It was the keen-eyed man who spoke: I realised this must be Foscari. ‘We have read the evidence you put before us. What claim have you on this man’s estate, except the testimony of this woman?’

  Onorata was wrapped up with swaddling bands, very loosely, for the look of the thing. Being fed, I had every hope she’d sleep and look sweet. With her arranged in the crook of my arm, I stepped forward and waited until Honorius finished repeating verbally what he had dictated to any number of the Doge’s secretaries.

  ‘Lords, seigniors, illustrious Duca.’ I let my Iberian accent come out, and caught Leon Battista’s eye as I looked up as modestly as I could. ‘If the late Tommaso Cassai, artist in Rome, could speak to you, he would tell you about the truth of this—’

  Yes: he’d tell you I’m lying in my teeth!

  ‘—If you wish, I will swear an oath that Messer Alberti promised me marriage before he seduced me, and I therefore considered us betrothed—’

  I said I would swear it. Not that it would be true.

  Because I will swear myself black in the face if it helps. And if court life teaches you anything, it is how to lie with the greatest innocence.

  ‘—I don’t beg you not to punish him, illustrious sirs. Only to have mercy on my child. Who needs her father!’

  And that may be true–or she may already be overburdened with a mother-father.

  The man to Foscari’s right said, ‘We could order some settlement made out of the prisoner’s estate?’

  Honorius’s hand closed around my elbow and gently pulled me back–but I had no chance of breaking his grip. He glanced down as he let me go, and stroked a fingertip over the baby’s fine fluffy hair where it protruded from under her linen cap. I saw Doge Foscari register his smile.

  That’s useful: he sees that the baby’s grandfather is willing to acknowledge her—

  My thoughts were interrupted by a burst of deep-throated laughter from the councillor on the Doge’s left hand:

  ‘That is poetic!’

  He was overweight, with the high colour fat men in middle age get. I stared at him, not knowing whether to wish him dead of a heart spasm on the spot. Foscari lifted his eyebrow again, as if he wished to seem slightly disconcerted; the other men on the council followed his lead by frowning.

  ‘Poetic justice, perhaps.’ Doge Foscari linked his fingers together on the polished dark table. The cabochon-cut rings he wore reflected in the shine, in dark incarnations of their colours: emerald, ruby, sapphire. I wondered which, if any, was the ring with which the Doge of The Most Serene Republic weds the sea every Easter-tide. The council put their heads together again and I couldn’t hear anything they said.

  Rekhmire’ touched my shoulder, and Saverico took the baby out of my arm, returning her to another wet-nurse brought for the look of the thing. I dabbed at a damp spot on the silk brocade bodice Neferet had loaned me, and saw my fingertips shaking.

  Not the time to be holding a child. Nightmare visions of her fragility assailed me, and I blinked them away, staring across the room at Leon Battista. At this distance I could see little enough–only that he seemed well-dressed, grubby, pale with his time in prison; but had evidently been kept in locked apartments, rather than down below us in the dungeons.

  That will not stop them hanging him now, if they decide to.

  We would look like a normal aristocrat family gathered in this justice hall. Even an Alexandrine secretary would not be so unusual. I wondered how many of the councillors were looking and wondering where the other representative of Alexandria was this morning. Do they know she’s his lover? Do they know ‘she’ should be here in place of me?

  Hot sweat gathered, and rolled down my back between my shoulder-blades. The canvas straps of the corset chafed under the sleeves of my bodice. For the first time in a number of years, I wished for a sword, and the memory of my knightly training.

  ‘You paint, Donna Ilaria,’ Foscari remarked, leaning forward and speaking plainly and clearly to me.

  It may have been how he spoke to foreigners uncertain of the Venetian language. It felt as if he spoke to a child of eight or ten winters.

  ‘I was studying the New Art in the studio of Tommaso Cassai.’ Some truth must have rung in my tone, since that was the case. I saw two of the councillors speak to each other behind the chair of a third. ‘Messer Leon Battista Alberti presented me with his treatise on the eye, and vision in painting. It is here.’

  Rekhmire’ walked forward and placed De Pictura on the table before the Doge, bowed, and returned to his place behind me.

  Foscari shot a look at Leon Battista. ‘The writing of this took you some time?’

  ‘Yes, messire.’ His voice sounded dry.

  ‘And the copying, also, to have a copy that Donna Ilaria might have read to her?’

  Leon Battista nodded, not speaking.

  The Doge Foscari leaned back in his carved chair. ‘Clearly, Donna Ilaria’s father, Lord Honorius, supposed there to be a betrothal, all that time. Or you would not have been permitted to give such a gift. You do not deny this?’

  Leon’s chin came up. ‘I say nothing.’

  …And therefore, so far, not one of us has lied.

  ‘I understand there has been legislation passed in Florence of late.’ The Doge ignored a choked-off laugh from the fat man, and looked further down the table. ‘Simon?’

  The sleek man he addressed leaned his hands on the table. ‘Indeed, seignior. They have passed laws legitimising prostitution. Messer Alberti will have heard.’

  ‘They have done this,’ the Doge Foscari looked blandly at Leon Battista Alberti, ‘so that the young men of the city should become less interested in, shall we say, exclusively male pursuits.’

  I fixed my eyes on a
tile on the floor, following the ochre and red glaze’s repeating geometric pattern. I will not look at my father, I will not look at Rekhmire’! ‘Exclusively male.’ Let Doge Foscari think the young woman is modestly pretending not to understand what is referred to.

  Under my skirts, I have a womb and (as I ascertained privately once I was sufficiently healed) a functioning penis. ‘Exclusively male’ is considerably outside my experience.

  ‘…And to further eradicate the sin of Sodom,’ the Doge was saying. He had risen to his feet at some point; a ripple of light from the torches shot back colour from his jewel-encrusted brocade robes. Drawing him would be easy, painting the effect of that light and shadow unbelievably difficult. He held out his hands, plainly giving judgement.

  ‘This is the sentence on Messer Leon Battista Alberti. Because of his family’s good name, and because of the lineage of the Captain-General of Castile and Leon,’ a bow towards my father, ‘it is considered just that the penalty of execution be commuted to exile. Messer Leon Battista Alberti shall have a month to leave our territories of the Italian Peninsula. But in the interests of holding up a good example, and discouraging that sin of Sodom which in Florence is so prevalent, and which threatens us everywhere, Messer Leon Battista Alberti shall hold to his promise of betrothal.’

  Rekhmire’’s arm quivered, where he had stepped close and now pressed against me. I felt his shock as clearly as I felt mine. Honorius frowned and opened his mouth. Out of sight, I dug my fingers into the palm of his hand, cutting myself against the edge of his plate gauntlet.

  Foscari turned his head away and fixed an unrelenting gaze on Leon Battista.

  ‘Because we will see justice done, you will be married in the presence of a priest. Before you depart from Venezia! I will call for a confessor now, and you shall be shriven clean so that you can marry. This child will have a father’s name. This shamed maiden shall be made into a wife.’

  Silence echoed through the chamber.

  The Doge turned towards Honorius. ‘It has been forty days: your daughter has been churched.’