by Mary Gentle
The two soldiers had four priests with them, solemn faced, not permitting any word to be spoken; not even a greeting and a farewell. Tottola smiled at me. Attila looked intense.
I put my hands inside Onorata’s linen shirt and blanket to find out why she grizzled, and encountered the hard nub of folded paper.
There was enough light when they left with her for me to puzzle out the words–the scribe’s hand of Ramiro Carrasco. But my father Honorius’s unmistakable irascible tone:
‘The damn book-buyer’s back. Persuaded me I can’t be there tomorrow. He says, Chances are, anyway, you’ll have more parents there than you know what to do with.’
This is supposed to humble, I thought. But how can it do anything except make a man proud?
Being at the centre of all this attention, as the sinner is.
Polyphonic voices echoed out from the great heights of the cathedral roof; like bells, organs, great waterfalls of sound. The reverberations struck me under the breastbone. I trembled. If I had had to walk, I might have fallen down. But I was directed to crawl.
Five thousand people lined the road to the cathedral doors. I could see through the great arched opening that the cathedral was full. Keeping myself conscious of lines of legs, lines of bodies, tonal mass of heads, I might reduce all to their component parts, I need not see them as men and women of the court, who know, or know of, the King’s hermaphrodite Ilario.
The mosaic floor was hard under my hands and knees. One drum, tapped by a royal page walking behind me, kept to a rhythm. I crawled under the shadow of the great receding arches of the door, passing from under the gazes of the stone saints in their round-arched niches.
Not out of sight of the crowds. Their voices rumbled behind me, loud enough for me to hear even over the thunder of the choirs.
Scent is the most familiar thing, and sound next. The great horns blazing out anthems, echoing down the long aisles of the cathedral–how many times have I stood at the back, near this door, watching the King in procession to the altar? How many times have I smelled the flowers and dust on these ancient tiles: stags, bulls, boar, star maps, ships, all shaped out of tiny squares of coloured stone?
The wind whisked dust through the open door behind me and I pressed my chin down, staring at the floor, and praying that my shirt wouldn’t blow up over my arse.
Bad enough to be crawling up the centre aisle, under the eye of every man.
Bad enough to know the women are up above, behind pierced stone screens, staring down with their hands over their mouths, frantic with enjoyment of the scandal.
For a second I pictured this from their perspective: looking down the great open space of the ochre-walled cathedral, all the spaces between the striped red pillars crowded elbow-to-elbow with Rodrigo Sanguerra’s courtiers. Lines of priests in their green robes keeping the centre aisle clear. And there, on that wide empty paving, the lone small figure on hands and knees, creeping slowly, so slowly, forward…
All I could see were priests’ sandals and the hems of green robes embroidered with gold oak leaves. I didn’t lift my head to look higher. It cannot possibly be further to the lectern and the altar—
A hand touched my hair.
‘Here,’ Bishop Heldefredus’s voice said above me, and his fingers pushed me to the side.
Light fell down in green and blue and scarlet and gold, patching the floor, drowning out the colours of the mosaic. The great Briar Cross stood in front of the coloured glass window, all the red glass centred about it, so the light fell over the altar like the Unspilled Blood of Christus Imperator, and the birth-blood of His Mother.
I didn’t look higher than the bare feet of the Emperor tied to the Tree. I couldn’t lift my head; I shook.
‘We are brought here to witness reconciliation,’ Heldefredus’s voice called out, above my bowed head. ‘Which is a holy state, belonging to God, and we will first pray for God’s guidance.’
The antiphonal response thundered back.
My eyes were running; I blinked furiously to be able to see. The bishop’s hand pressed down on my shoulder. Yes, I remember—
The stone floor between the altar and the lectern felt bare and cold, no different from when Bishop Heldefredus had led me here this morning to instruct me. Except that then the cathedral had been empty, open doors letting in slanting sunlight, and silence, and the smell of the sea. Not packed with sweating men, all in court clothes, all with their eyes on me.
I stood up on legs like water, saw my knees had bled onto the hem of my shirt, and stumbled two steps. I fell on the stone floor and pitched forward, caught myself on my hands, and lowered myself down, my arms before me as the bishop had directed.
Prostration is moral and mental, as well as physical, but it is also practical. Laying face down while Heldefredus mounted the lectern and began to preach over my prone body, I could lean my forehead against the muscles of my arms, and ease a little of the pain from the cold floor. The shirt they’d given me was long enough to be decent, if I stayed still. But it was thin. I felt every line of the mosaic, every shiver of the cold marble and basalt.
I shut the congregation out of my thoughts. Telling myself: This is only the cathedral I have attended since the age of fifteen: there is no one here to watch me—
Quieter than the preaching bishop could hear, one of the royal guards standing over me murmured, ‘Bet his cock’s cold down there.’
The answer from his companion came in the tone of a man being self-congratulatorily clever. ‘Bet her tits are!’
I knew if I looked up, I wouldn’t see anything but impassive expressions. By the voices, these are men whom I have known by name, to speak to when we passed in palace corridors…
Heldefredus stopped speaking.
As the second bishop, Ermanaric, climbed up to the lectern, I followed my instructions and pushed myself up and back, so that I was on my knees.
Aldra Pirro Videric met my gaze.
The packed faces in the body of the church vanished.
I turned my head swiftly away from him. Looking up—
I caught a movement. A dark silhouette, behind the fragile fretwork of stone that hides the women’s congregation from the sight of the men.
My mother, Rosamunda.
Without seeing her face, without seeing the colour of her gown, without more than the hint of an outline–I know her.
For a heart’s beat I was back in Carthage, on the great dock below the Bursa-hill, under the brown twilight of the Penitence. Following Rekhmire’ onto a ship. Looking back past Honorius and his then-unknown household guard as they embarked with us. Hoping that, even then–even though I knew she had gone back to Taraco in disgrace weeks ago–even then she might still come after me to make her apology.
No, not an apology, I thought, peering up at the stone screen with my neck aching. Sadder than that. If she had only come to take me into her arms, I would have imagined the apology without her needing to speak it.
And imagination would have been all it would be.
‘Ilario!’
Heldefredus’s whisper brought my head jerking back down.
Aldra Videric stared at me, his face impassive. Knowing him, I could see in his eyes that my turning to Rosamunda first had angered him almost to the point of losing that perfect control.
The stiff embroidered robes of the archbishop swept between me and my stepfather. I found myself staring at viridian silk, fine white lawn, and the ends of a stole crusted with gold thread and embroidered with Eagle, Boar, Oak-leaf, and gladius hispaniensis. Because this was an archbishop, the sword blade was sewn in silver thread.
A sweaty hand lay heavily on my head and I heard the blessing ring out.
‘Penitent,’ he added, removing the hand. With an effort I looked up at Archbishop Cunigast. Thought of sermons slept through in short winter days when the King has coal-braziers brought into his chapel in this cathedral, and it is necessary to break the ice on the holy water in the font.
&nbs
p; The heated June afternoon swept back over me. I blinked, hardly able to hold Cunigast’s gaze.
‘Penitent, do you truly desire to make restitution?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ My voice broke from alto to baritone and back. I heard a flutter of amusement behind me.
Scarlet, I kept my gaze fixed on the folds of the archbishop’s robes. Folds in cloth: an elementary difficulty for the novice painter.
‘You will be prepared,’ Cunigast said, and stepped away in a swirl of bullion thread and silk.
In the order of service it read Prepare him or Prepare her. Neither fitted me.
Two priests in plain green robes stepped smartly up beside me; one pulled my hair up and snipped briskly away at it with scissors; the other lathered soap and warm water in a silver bowl, and followed his brother, shaving away the trimmed hair. I shut my eyes as soapy water trickled down my forehead, soaking the front of my shirt.
A cloth dabbed across my closed eyes.
‘Thank you.’ I acknowledged the priest, forgetting I wasn’t to speak, and he bobbed his head awkwardly, eyes wide.
If he’s a day over sixteen, I’m Videric’s natural son!
Eyes clear of soap, I had no excuse not to look in the direction of the altar while a third bishop, whom I didn’t know, blessed me, and flicked consecrated water over me.
Am I blessed or exorcised? I wondered, and gave up to focus on Videric.
He seems–no different.
I suppose I had expected him to look older, or tired. Or more impressive, perhaps. Either less frightening than the Videric of my mind who had sent Ramiro Carrasco and others to kill me, or else more so.
No…
Four chairs had been set up below the altar, on the widest step. Black polished oak, with pointed Gothic arches cut into the woodwork, and finials crowning their high backs. The seats were boxes; the sides fretwork open enough to make a pattern by showing the coloured robes of each man. The King, Rodrigo Sanguerra, with the gold Roman laurels of one of the Ancient Kingdoms winding around his brow. The archbishop, in forest green and silver. One chair empty–Aldro Rosamunda will not be permitted to sit down here in the main body of the church next to her husband, even today.
And, in the chair nearest me, Videric.
A burly, fair-haired man, blue eyes half closed against the light pouring down from the highest ogee windows. His legs were encased in mirror-bright steel: sabatons on his feet, greaves and chausses covering shin and thigh. Over that, a striped blue and white livery coat covered all of his breastplate; all of his armour but his gorget and haut-pieces; and above that he was bare-headed. He wore Rodrigo Sanguerra’s badge on the breast of his livery coat over his heart, and he had had himself shaven and his beard clipped down to a fine gold shadow. Nobleman; knight; a man entirely fitted to be first minister to a king.
His chin rested on his hand. His eyes were fixed on me.
My skin crawled. I felt worse than naked.
I rubbed my palm nervously over my scalp, feeling the tufts of hair the boy priests had missed. One single layer of cloth kept my body from the prurient interest of the court behind me. Videric…
Looks clear through me.
One of the bishops began to repeat the Penitential Psalms, his voice echoing confidently through the vast spaces of the church.
I allowed myself one glance back into the body of the cathedral, as if I looked up at the lectern above me and eased an ache in my neck.
No man that I could take to be a tall shaven-headed Egyptian.
Is he here? Would Honorius try to reassure me with a lie?
As if I put my hand back onto hot metal, I looked in the direction that I was supposed to. At the chairs. At my King and the churchman Cunigast. The empty chair…If I look at that, I thought, perhaps I need not look at Videric until the end; until I have to.
I must look.
Aldro Pirro Videric, eyes still slitted against the light, continued to rest his chin on the heel of his hand. The bulk of his body and shoulders filled the space the chair allowed him. There was a smudge of pale dust on the boot sole under one sabaton. He would have ridden down from the palace with King Rodrigo this morning, not trudged here like the townsmen outside, or some of the poorer courtiers in the cathedral.
I let myself meet his gaze.
His attention struck me like a physical shock.
How in the name of the eight gods am I going to sound convincing!
Panic flooded me. Tension weakened the muscles of my knees, or I might have sprung up and turned to run out of the building. This man, this man with absolute control over himself—
Fountains flashing in the palace’s enclosed courtyards, Videric’s sandals rapping on the tiles as he strode down the corridor, and his concerned tone as he glanced at me: She wants to speak to you. I don’t know why. Be kind to her.
I met his eyes, deliberately, and stared him down.
She wanted to see me because you ordered her to kill me.
You ordered her to make friends with me. Long ago. So that she could be there if it became necessary to kill me.
Videric’s mouth moved, lip curving up a small amount. He gave me a measuring smile.
Every muscle in my body tensed. I saw it as clearly as if I lay anatomised on a slab in Alexandria’s Royal Library: the pull of tendon, the contraction and swelling of muscle, the support of bone.
I am four yards away from his chair, and once again they have forgotten that the King’s master-at-arms trained me as a knight.
I am swift enough to cover the distance, snatch Videric’s dagger out of that tooled leather sheath, and have the blade down between his collar and his gorget into his heart before any man can stop me.
Videric, his gaze on me, gave a little shrug with his brows, as if disappointed that I had not responded to his smile.
Momentarily I shut my eyes.
Sharp anger flooded through me; washed me away like an undertow of the sea. I bit the inside of my lip until I tasted blood, and opened my eyes and looked at him again.
The ex-First Minister Videric stared amiably back at me.
He truly desires to be Rodrigo’s First Minister again. Therefore, I think–he doesn’t taunt me. Videric truly thinks that if he smiles, I will assume him a friend.
It took my breath.
The pale lines that being in the sun had put at the corners of his eyes creased. Videric’s chin dipped infinitesimally, on his fist. I know him well enough to read what he intends to convey: Courage!
‘Courage…’ I breathed out.
A silence swept through the hot cathedral.
No man moved.
Videric shifted and sat upright in the chair of state. He turned to speak to the King.
‘Sire, it will not be justice if my wife is not here to witness Ilario’s penitence. I realise where we are–but she is willing to come veiled.’
His words fell like stones into water, in the great crowded building.
Glancing back at the pierced stone screen, I wasn’t surprised to see the silhouette gone. Videric would not ask such a question unless he knew the answer. I barely bothered listening to Archbishop Cunigast explain just why God would make a merciful exception in the interests of justice.
Rosamunda walked out from the narthex, behind the altar, and walked past me to sit in the empty chair.
Her scent caught in the back of my throat.
Gold wire made a miniature moon-horn of her head-dress, and the veil that hung down was of the finest flax, perfectly translucent. I gazed at her curling black hair, and full warm lips, and did not let myself look her in the eye.
If I face her, I will not be able to do this.
Heldefredus’s narrow hand bit into my shoulder, fingertips curling to catch me under the edge of my collarbone. ‘Now, Ilario.’
A tingle shot down my arm. Not pain. Enough sensation to remind me what I must now do.
I stood up, took three paces forward, dropped down on my knees as the bishop had rehearsed
me, and looked directly up at Videric where he sat on the chair above me.
The position placed me equally carefully. The slanting beam of light from the altar window shone down, illuminating me so that every man, every woman, in this building can see the broad shoulders and wide hips of the one who is man and woman.
And therefore not a man, and not a woman.
I knelt, my spine stiff, my head up.
‘I beg for your pardon.’ Tension cracked my voice again: deep one moment and falsetto the next. ‘Aldra Pirro Videric, I humbly beg your forgiveness.’
Videric stood up, both hands momentarily gripping the arms of his chair.
The sun shone off his armour and livery surcoat. Steel and blue and white…With the sun so bright on him, the thinning of his hair was hidden, and the incipient rounding of his jaw lost.
A shame, I thought. It made him more human to me. Something in him might touch me if I thought him just a man of Honorius’s age, subject to piles and insomnia and stomach-ache when he ate spices that hadn’t troubled him if he ate them at twenty.
Rosamunda stood up, resting her hand on her husband’s arm, flax linen gloves showing the delicate rose-pink of her fingers against the steel of his vambrace.
Get away from me!
I forced myself not to shout it aloud.
The humiliation of this is that I am still, after a year, afraid of them both.
The stone was hard under my knees. Through Rosamunda’s veil I saw the shape of spite and pleasure on her face. Only I was close enough to see.
I stumbled over the words Bishop Heldefredus had rehearsed me in.
‘Aldra Videric, I beseech you humbly to intercede on my behalf. With God and with His Majesty, for their, for their forgiveness. I swear to do as I have done these past days: to prostrate and humiliate myself, to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to clothe my body in rags and plunge my soul in sorrow—’
Videric took a step forward.
I had not expected it.
A shiver went through me; I thought it must be visible at least to the closest row of men watching.
