by Mary Gentle
I stood up from the bed. ‘What in your eight hells do you think you’re—’
‘I’m leaving the city.’ Rekhmire’ crossed to a chest I hadn’t noticed, and began to recover small items of his own, which he threw into a bag. ‘I have an escort from the King. I’m travelling to Lord Videric’s estate, to speak with him.’
The book-buyer had his belongings together by the time a man could count a hundred. Half-sentences came into my mind: I couldn’t get any of them out.
Going to Videric.
‘Are you going to…put this suggestion to him?’
The Egyptian only glanced at me.
I wondered how Videric would be now. And Rosamunda. After six or eight months stewing in the provinces, in the winter cold and spring mud and summer heat. Among peasants and serfs, and whatever minor nobility were their neighbours. If their neighbours haven’t snubbed them.
Rosamunda will have hated being away from foreign merchants, and Rodrigo’s court entertainments. Who’s the leader of the Court of Ladies now?
‘Rekhmire’.’
He slammed a tiny chest shut with great vehemence. ‘No matter your decision–I must talk to the man.’
He turned around, pushed himself on his stick towards the oak inner doors and turned the key in its lock, locking Carrasco and Onorata in. He limped towards the outer door again.
‘I will send in your visitor.’
The door closed behind him before I could get a word out.
The room was frighteningly silent without Onorata’s noises, without Honorius’s voice, or his soldiers’, or the Egyptian’s. Only Attila and Tottola’s tribal dialect in the antechamber made this sound like a human habitation.
Out of nowhere, I thought, This is the first time in eight months or more that I won’t be in Rekhmire’’s company.
The door creaked. I realised I was studying the pattern of grain in the floorboards, and lifted my head.
King Rodrigo Sanguerra stood just inside the closed door.
I sprang to my feet as rapidly as long-inculcated instinct could move me, and dropped down on one knee.
The King smiled crookedly, gesturing for me to rise.
He crossed past me to stare out of the south-facing windows; ran a finger across the sculpted frame’s vine leaves, and picked up one of the translucent porcelain dishes that I had brought back from Zheng He’s ship.
There was no noise except the singing of laundry women, hundreds of feet below, beating sheets in tubs in a courtyard exposed to the sun. My chest hurt. I realised I was holding my breath.
‘Majesty.’ I let the breath out with a little gasp. ‘Is it safe for you to visit us here?’
His hooded eyelids dropped down over his large eyes; I knew it for amusement. It faded. ‘King Rodrigo Sanguerra isn’t here. But the slave Ilario’s old owner is.’
‘I was freed again. In Rome.’ My mouth was dry. ‘I won’t do what you ask.’
Rodrigo didn’t sit down. His habitual slow pace carried him from the windows to the shuttered cupboards that lined the walls, and to the dais on which the bed stood with its hangings closed, and the middle of the bare floor.
Rodrigo Sanguerra said, ‘I owe you an apology.’
I could not have imagined this as something he would ever say.
I bit back suspicion. ‘Majesty?’
‘I won’t lie.’
He turned on his heel, looking at me with a glint in his dark eyes. Rodrigo’s strong features took the window’s light, and I ached to draw him.
He added, ‘I owe you an apology for owning you–or, for not freeing you before I did. But I won’t lie: I’m more sorry that my ownership of you has come back to bite me…’
He walked to stand in front of me. You did not commonly notice, until he was in the (admittedly rich) doublet and hose and cap of any courtier, rather than cloak and crown of the King, that he was not a particularly tall man. I doubted him a hand taller than I. But whatever his stature, he contrived to give the impression of looking down at a man.
‘Ilario…I know an apology doesn’t matter to you—’
‘It does!’
The reply startled out of me.
I blushed.
I shook my head, as if I could clear from it the shock of seeing Rodrigo Sanguerra here in these shabby rooms. And the wrench of all the old affection between us. Because affection is possible between master and slave, no matter how distorted.
I stared at Rodrigo. ‘But I still won’t do what you’re—what’s being asked of me. I can’t. I shouldn’t. Not for my sake. Not for my daughter’s sake.’
And not for my father’s, though I have not yet spoken to Honorius.
Rodrigo Sanguerra slowly shook his head. His presence seemed to fill the room. He came to the throne before I was born; there was white in his beard now. I wondered if he had summoned the Crown Prince back, some time between last year and now, or whether Prince Thorismund was still in the north fighting against Franks.
‘You have recognised old friends here,’ King Rodrigo said mildly.
Familiar faces among the men on the quayside at the chandlers’ shops, and in the long market between the docks and the palace, and in the livery of King Rodrigo at the palace gates…
‘Yes, Majesty.’
He lifted a blunt-fingered hand, pointing at the window. ‘And you know, because you must in the past have ridden over, every mile between here and the mountains.’
‘Yes, I’ve loved this place,’ I gritted. ‘You want me to make it so that I and Onorata can’t come back here without disgrace.’
There would be layer upon layer of thoughts beneath what he actually said; I knew him of old. When he first bought me as a cocky fifteen-year-old, I thought a king would have too many affairs of state to be concerned with what his slave got up to. He sent me to the cane often enough to disabuse me of that very quickly. A king must at least try to think of everything.
Rodrigo looked directly at me. ‘Ilario. Will you go through with making a public apology, if Aldra Videric will consent to it?’
Consent!
I stared at Rodrigo Sanguerra. If he asks ‘will you do this for me?’, I’ll spit in his face.
‘No. I won’t do it. And if you order me, because you’re my King–I still won’t do it.’ I held his gaze. ‘I’m not looking for an excuse to give consent.’
‘No, I see that.’
Rodrigo Sanguerra moved restlessly, walking to the window again, and turning on his heel and walking back.
‘A king is a steward of his country.’
I shrugged. ‘Slaves don’t have a country.’
Rodrigo gazed down at me without acknowledging that. ‘Steward. Not a Dictator or Tyrant, as the ancient Greeks had it, to hold everything his private property. Do you understand, a steward? To keep the peace? And to leave that peace to the next generation?’
I thought of Onorata, behind the door with Ramiro Carrasco.
‘I understand.’ I bit my lip. ‘No. The answer is no. I won’t have her grow up regarded as dirt because of what I’m supposed to have done. I won’t lie!’
The King of Taraconensis knelt down on the bare dusty floor.
I gaped; I must have looked like a gaffed fish.
Rodrigo Sanguerra had moved stiffly getting down on his knees, and he knelt as if the bare boards hurt his bones. His spine was ramrod-stiff; his chin jutted up. I could only stare.
‘I can’t give you this in public.’ His voice sounded low but not particularly quiet. ‘Not the way you would wish it. I’m a king: I can’t shake my people’s confidence in me that way. But I will give you all the humiliation you wish of me, here in private. I once owned you. Ilario, I beg you to do this thing.’
Ilario, close your mouth, I thought.
And did.
‘I beg you, on my knees. If you desire an apology for anything that occurred while I owned you, you have only to speak. I kiss your hands and feet and I beg you to go before the people and lie.’
‘You can’t do this, Majesty!’
‘I came here to you to do this.’ Rodrigo’s dark eyes unwaveringly held my gaze. ‘My life’s work is tottering. The peace will fail. Carthage will send in legions. If fighting won’t serve me, I’ll grovel at any man’s feet if it stops that.’
‘Why don’t you put me in prison? There are still torturers here, aren’t there? Why don’t you force me?’
‘Will you make it necessary?’
In another man it would have been an implied threat. With Rodrigo (as I have long had cause to know), it is merely honesty.
He shook his head, as if at an afterthought, red lips quirking in his dark beard. ‘And besides, penitence is rarely convincing and true, brought about by those means!’
I stared down at him, starkly disbelieving. Amazed.
There is nothing you will not do to save your home, I thought.
Or to set me an example.
The room, heating in the early sun, held a mere breath of air passing through from the south windows. I stood in hose and shirt and unlaced doublet; I must be stinking of sweat and my child, in no condition to see polite company.
The older man, much my senior, knelt on the hard boards in front of me and waited.
I thought of the long-ago morning when Father Felix had brought me into King Rodrigo’s breakfast chamber, to listen to courtiers discussing the hermaphrodite’s wedding night with a woman.
Now the King’s shoulders were tense under the mole-black velvet of his doublet, sewn everywhere with the flower and serpent of Taraconensis. If I sketched him, I realised, I would have to dig deep to uncover those emotions behind the forced calm.
But they are there.
Bitterly, I said, ‘I couldn’t teach you what humiliation is, Majesty.’
Looking into those darkest of brown eyes, I thought of Ramiro Carrasco–and realised, in that moment, that Rodrigo Sanguerra of Taraconensis has no more idea of what to expect as a slave than Ramiro Carrasco had. And that, as with Ramiro, this is not the key of the matter.
‘You’re on your knees to me, Majesty.’
‘Yes.’ He didn’t flush, but the lines in his face altered.
‘Begging me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because…’ I took a deep breath. ‘Because you want me to see what you’ll do for Taraco. And then–you want me to do the same thing.’
His shoulders went back as if he were one of Honorius’s soldiers on parade. It was only in the rigidity of his spine that I could see how much fury, how much outrage, he suppressed in himself.
‘What you have to do will be humiliating, yes.’ He lifted his gaze, for the first time coming within a hair’s breadth of true appeal. ‘And I beg, the King begs you: humiliate yourself, in front of your enemy, because I need you to. We need you to.’
I went to speak and he interrupted.
‘This is the country in which you were born a bastard, raised and sold and treated as a slave: I understand this—’
‘You don’t, Majesty.’
He hesitated for the first time. ‘No. But there are people here, all the same. Some you know. Most you never will. And I ask you: do it for them. I don’t ask you to do it for me. I may be many things, but I am not quite such a fool as that.’
He permitted me to stand in silence, then, watching him. Looking at the King of Taraco, down on his knees to a slave, a freed slave.
It moves me that he’ll do this for the people here.
It moved me still more that I could read, in the lines of his body and face, quite how much he feared being made to grovel by someone too young, too spiteful, too unwise not to break another human being.
‘Majesty, do you think I’m risking making you into an enemy because I want some petty apology?’
The fear left him.
I read in his face that he knew that, whether I agreed or not, I would not make a king perform the same tricks as a King’s Freak.
I fell on my knees in front of him, as I have so often in my life, but never when he himself was kneeling before me. He reached out to take my hands. His grip was strong, but I felt him shaking. Kings are not treated so; undefeated kings, off the field of battle, do not expect to find themselves on their knees.
‘Forgive me, Majesty!’
‘You ask me? When a slave must have so many justified grudges against his master?’
‘You never did anything any other man wouldn’t have done, sire.’
Rodrigo winced. ‘That is the worst condemnation I have ever had, I think.’
‘Sire—’
‘Help me up, Ilario. My knees aren’t what they were as a young man.’
By the amount of weight he rested on my arm and shoulder when he had to rely on his right knee, he was correct in that.
‘I’m sorry I did not treat you better.’ His expression was still a touch that of a man speaking to a child or a hound, but less so than I had ever known him. ‘Ilario, if you wish, I will implore you every day now. Do this. Please.’
‘Stop.’ I was still holding his arm, I found. Bewildered, I didn’t release it. There were still the muscles of a knight and warrior under the velvet. ‘Majesty, please. Do you think I can’t see what’s at stake?’
‘Well then—’
‘I’m not only afraid for myself.’
Finally I brought myself to let go of his arm, and look at the face I knew so well.
‘I have a child. I have a father. There are others…And I know this won’t be enough. Not for Videric. Majesty, he sent men to Italy to kill me–I don’t know any fewer of his secrets now than I did then! If I go through some ceremony of reconciliation, then in a few months, or a few years, Lord Videric will come after me, and kill me. And he’ll kill or disgrace or otherwise destroy all of us who know what did happen at Carthage. He’ll kill Onorata. He’ll kill Captain-General Honorius.’
I did not mention to my King that Rekhmire’ and Ramiro Carrasco, Attila and Tottola, and all of Honorius’s household guard, would be Videric’s targets too. I don’t deceive myself that they’re of high enough rank for him to care as more than a point of principle.
I held Rodrigo’s gaze. ‘Taking up his place as your First Minister won’t make Lord Videric safe again, Majesty. Not in his eyes—’
‘Wait.’ Rodrigo held up his scarred hand.
The bushy dark brows came down in a frown.
‘While I grant that panic might, in the past, have forced Videric into errors–I know the man! He’s worked beside me for twenty-five years. If his King commands him to treat you with all respect and civility, then he will do it. There can be no doubt of that.’
I looked at Rodrigo’s expression of certainty.
And one day, one day there’ll be bandits, or thieves, or robbers on the road, or pirates who swoop down on a ship, and leave no one they find alive or recognisable.
But this man is Videric’s friend. And quite naturally, he won’t believe that.
Rodrigo Sanguerra gave me a curt nod.
‘Ilario. I’ll call on you again tomorrow.’
8
Honorius and Sergeant Orazi were deep in discussion when I arrived at their chambers, debating how the Chin ship’s rocket-arbalests and pottery grenadoes might be used in an Iberian army, should Zheng He ever be persuaded to part with any, or part with the plans for them.
‘Which I doubt,’ Honorius concluded rapidly, a broad grin spreading over his face. He reached out for Onorata with prison-pale hands.
Orazi and Saverico and even Berenguer allowed themselves to be brought to admit the child had grown bigger, and more active; and Honorius’s men-at-arms exchanged grins over his head as he put her on a wolf-skin rug at his feet.
My child cooed and laughed, and thwacked her grandfather’s toes with her fists.
‘She’ll be a quick one when she’s
grown,’ Honorius observed. He gave Ramiro Carrasco a thoughtful stare, and directed Berenguer to take the man into the kitchens and feed him.
‘Then,’ the Lion of Castile added, ‘you might feel inclined to tell me what has you worse concerned than yesterday?’
‘God preserve me from mercenary commanders with a keen nose!’ I could make little amusement sound in my voice.
Orazi took himself to the door, to engage the King’s guards in conversation; Saverico appeared no older than fourteen as he sat down on the wolf-skin to prevent a wide-eyed Onorata eating two bone dice and a chess-man; and I detailed the actions of King Rodrigo to my father.
It took me while the sun rose a finger’s width up the morning sky. I turned my head fifty times in the hour expecting Rekhmire’ to walk in through the door.
‘…And the King says he will come to me again. Until I agree, evidently.’
Expectant, I tensed for Honorius’s bellowing rage.
Honorius presented me with his lean profile as he gazed towards the window. He rubbed a hand through cropped hair in which the sun showed more grey than when we had stood in Venice.
In a level tone, he said, ‘I see why King Rodrigo suggests this.’
I sat perfectly still.
I wish I might ask Rekhmire’ his opinion of this.
I wish Rekhmire’ were not absent from Taraco now with the last word between us an angry one.
‘If you were Videric,’ I demanded. ‘If you went through with this farce for public consumption, would you leave Ilario, and Honorius, and Rekhmire’, and Onorata, alive afterwards?’
‘I’d think it would look suspicious for those people to die, son-daughter.’
‘So perhaps he’d wait a while—’
Honorius bent over and picked Onorata up from the wolf-skin. She bubbled happily, and pulled at the laces on Honorius’s doublet with all ten fingers splayed. He hoisted her, with a grin, as if he tested her weight.
‘She’s thriving.’ The grin became a beam. Honorius stood and tucked her into the crook of his arm, tickled with a forefinger, and was rewarded with a gurgle.
‘There might not be war here yet,’ he added quietly, continuing to smile down at her. ‘But Carthage will most certainly send in legions and a governor this year, if nothing happens to prevent it. The fourteenth Utica and the sixth Leptis Parva, with Hanno Anagastes or the current head of House Barbas, would be my guess.’
