The Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  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?’

  Honorius didn’t take his eyes off Carrasco as he spoke.

  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.

  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 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 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. And Ilario is hardly welcome in Florence.’

  Without ever having been there, I reflected.

  Honorius gave the Egyptian a sceptical look. ‘You won’t be riding or walking to Florence until that knee’s healed up. But in any case, when I leave for Taraco, I desire some man to look out for my son-daughter’s interests—’

  I pounced on my father’s admission. ‘You’ll go back, now? Persuade Rodrigo to take his troops off your estate? Convince him you’re loyal?’

  Licinus Honorius gave me somewhat of an old-fashioned look. He sighed, shoulders appearing to relax their stiffness. ‘Say I agree with you. That returning Aldra Videric to the position of First Minister is the only way to both end this and keep Taraconensis safe. Which of us, alone, is in a position to begin this? Not the spy—’

  Rekhmire’ snorted.

  ‘—since King Rodrigo doesn’t know the Alexandrine well enough to trust him as I do.’

  I caught a fleeting look of embarrassed pleasure on Rekhmire’’s face. The trust of the Lion of Castile is not given lightly, or hurriedly. Evidently he appreciated this.

  ‘And not you,’ Honorius snapped bluntly, glaring at me. ‘Videric would show you your liver inside two days. That only leaves me.’

  I could find no ready answer.

  Turning aside, I directed Ramiro Carrasco to clear up the broken glass, and stood tearing at my mind for ideas while he did so and departed. Nothing came to me.

  Honorius’s hand rested on my shoulder with a sudden pressure that was startling.

  ‘I’ll go,’ he repeated. ‘As soon I have a safe refuge for you and Onorata. I’ll go back to King Rodrigo–I knew that I would have to.’

  I found myself torn between grief and joy. Joy that he could reconcile himself with the King; that he will not lose everything he ever earned–with his own blood–because of me. And grief, I reflected, because I will badly miss his presence, and because he may be going into more danger than we know.

  Honorius turned his face to the window for a moment, as if he could pierce the buildings and the haze of aerial perspective, and see westwards all the way over the Italies, and the Middle Sea, clear to Iberia. His eyes slitted.

  Turning back, my father shot me a look that, even in that dim panelled room, I could not mistake for anything but wry humour.

  ‘To be fair…’ Honorius sighed, and put his arm around my shoulder. ‘You realise, I hope? That this is the only way I might go home–and not kill Aldra Pirro Videric a quarter-hour after I set foot on Taraco dock?’

  2

  ‘Kill—’ Breath left me. I have not thought of this!

  Under the smile of Honorius’s much-creased face, I saw frank amorality, that if I had to guess, I would attribute to stratagems on the field of battle.

  ‘Ask yourself, Ilario. This man persecutes my son-daughter. Apparently he won’t stop. What’s the best way to ensure he will? A foot of steel through his ribs, and make mince-meat of his heart and lungs. The dead have no friends or allies.’

  Honorius had the flat of his hand resting against his thigh, where his sword would hang were he not in the house.

  A little weakly, I said, ‘You won’t kill him? Because–apart from needing the whoreson bastard as First Minister–they’d hang you for murdering a noble! Lion of Castile or not.’

  ‘“Lion of Castile” would get me hanged with a silken rope,’ Honorius mused, somewhat over-gravely. ‘Or at least the charity of an efficient headsman at the block. I once saw an execution take twenty blows of the axe, and the man’s head was still on—’

  ‘Father! ’

  ‘—just,’ he completed gruesomely, with an open, loving grin. ‘No: I won’t kill Pirro Videric. Much as the little shite deserves it. No: I won’t get myself executed. Or even arrested. Yes: I’ll talk as persuasively to His Grace King Rodrigo as I can. Are you content with that?’

  ‘More or less,’ I grumbled, with the intention of seeing if I could provoke a laugh out of him. It did.

  ‘Very well.’ He sobered, fixing me with a bright gaze. ‘And now we must make plans for you and my granddaughter.’

  I continued to pass nights broken by feeding Onorata. That would have given me time to think deeply on my father’s proposed departure, and how long I might be safe in Venice, if I had not ended all but delirious with sleeplessness, and unable to think at all.

  Seeing this, Honorius took it on himself to take at least one of the night feeds (‘What, you think me not capable of feeding my own grandchild? How many brats do you think a mercenary baggage-train has?’), although he drew the line at changing her soiled cloths.

  Rekhmire’, while content to nurse a sleeping child as he wrote his correspondence ready for sending east, lost his fascination for her as often as she puked or burped over him. Although I did find her in his company surprisingly often for a man who claimed to have no idea of what eunuchs and babies might have in common.

  ‘The ability to bawl their heads off when they don’t get their own way?’ was not the politest remark I ever allowed to unwisely escape me.

  Rekhmire’ merely sniffed.

  ‘I am not as sentimental as those great oafs of soldiers,’ he observed, and then pinched at the bridge of his nose as if to ease a headache brought on by writing. Eyes still closed, he added, ‘You have a dozen “uncles” for the child, who would take more care of her than an egg made of diamond–if only because they know Master Honorius would unravel their guts if they damaged his precious grandchild.’

  He opened his eyes and glared at me.

  ‘For the Eight’s sake, take advantage of that while you can!’

  ‘I
will.’ I nodded at the portable writing-slope on his lap. ‘If you’ve correspondence I can help write, I will. Meantime, since I’ve forgotten the outside world exists, I’m going out to the Merceria.’

  ‘Only if you—’

  ‘—take half of Honorius’s company with me,’ I finished, ahead of the Egyptian, and found myself with a grin. ‘I will. Can I run any errands for you while I’m out?’

  Rekhmire’ snorted, in a less than dignified manner, and rummaged among the scrolls and documents on the table beside him. ‘“Run”? I doubt you’ll run anywhere until those stitches heal! But if you care to waddle about the city for a while, see if you can discover any more of these put up on walls?’

  I took the paper he handed me. It was instantly recognisable: one of Leon’s seditious hand-bills.

  ‘You think Herr Mainz might be still here, and printing for someone else?’

  ‘I hope so. I have no great desire to go to Florence…’

  Despite walking about considerable areas of Venezia, with various of Honorius’s guard, I saw no similar hand-bills. The following day, I conceived of asking among the scriptoria, on the pretence of looking again for work, but found no one familiar with the overly-precise lettering of the supposed printing-machina.

  The following day brought sleet, slanting and chill, and took off every appearance Venice might have had of being in early spring.

  My healed stitches itched, and still pulled when I walked, I found. Those of the soldiers I privately consulted assured me this was normal for edged-weapon wounds–which I supposed Caesar’s cut at the base of the womb might best resemble.

  I refused to wear wooden pattens, and that at least made walking easier, without trying to balance several inches above the mud.

  Ramiro Carrasco can clean my shoes for me, I reflected, as I plodded over a high hump-backed bridge, treading in Attila’s footsteps through the mire. Ah, the evils of slavery…