by Mary Gentle
On the third day a different bishop, Heldefredus, preached about pardoning those who had sinned, and I took my place as one of the genuflectentes, kneeling between the cathedral door and the ambo, dizzy because of a whole day’s fast, and speaking only to implore the procession of priests as they walked past me:
‘Pray for me, a sinner!’
Again, I was taken out before the Mass was celebrated.
Videric was not present. Nor Rekhmire’.
Honorius let me know himself forbidden to come, and offered his presence all the same. I sent Orazi back with strict instructions to keep the Lion of Castile caged.
Let this not cause any more trouble than it has to!
King Rodrigo sent his household guard to assist in bringing me the plain meats that the bishops had allowed in my penitential cell on the first and second days.
Sergeant Orazi, scowling, told me each day in bad Alexandrine–incomprehensible to the junior priests who oversaw us–that none of our expected visitors had ridden into Taraco yet. And in the language of Taraconensis added that Onorata was well, and possibly missing me. Not knowing young babies, the sergeant said, he found it difficult to tell.
On the night of the first fast I didn’t see any of the guard, since no man was to bring me food, and the bishops’ priests evidently thought themselves capable of providing fresh water.
There was no candle or lantern in the hermit’s cell built outside, up against the cathedral walls. I took advantage of what daylight there was left coming through the door-grate to take the smuggled paper and chalk out from under the thin straw palliasse.
I drew faces. Odoin, who’d been a lieutenant in Rodrigo’s royal guard when I left, and now had his promotion to captain. Hunulf, and Winguric; who had worked with me in the scriptorium, and Galindus, of course.
I appreciated that they didn’t visit, since every other man or woman I might know from nine years in Rodrigo’s palace crowded close to satisfy their urge to stare at me.
The sheet of paper was not large. I drew faces in miniature. Egica, who taught me Latin and letters at sixteen, when it became apparent that Federico’s hired tutor had been cheap for a reason. Egica’s face was more lined, his nose more covered in red broken veins, in this last year; I could smell spirits on him when he stumbled past me, one hand outstretched as if he would have ruffled my hair in passing.
More men greeted me with shuttered faces. Less than a year, and I am ignored by those I have diced with and trained with in arms, and women-gossips with whom I debated what colours one might put together in embroidered tapestries…even young children whose parents had been passing friendly to the King’s Freak–
The light was definitely gone.
I crumpled the paper up into a compressed ball in my hand, and 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, 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 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 Fel
ix’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.
‘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.
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?’
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 prefe
r. 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 of 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’.
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.
