The Stone Golem

by Mary Gentle

  The small weight of the olive made it very satisfactory to lob.

  The Egyptian picked it up off the tiles, showing no inclination to eat it.

  ‘But truly,’ he said, as if it had been what we discussed. ‘You’ll let Pirro Videric force your hand, and leave tomorrow?’

  When I would have succumbed to temper, now I might cross the room and press my fingers and palms against the large muscles of the Egyptian’s neck. I found the touch of silk-warm skin both calmed and aroused.

  ‘If I have to leave Honorius and Onorata, a quick farewell is at least quick, and not long drawn out and painful.’

  ‘Then you need only decide where we are to go.’

  ‘I will. Not now.’ I looked up at the window, and the velvet moon. ‘I think, since it seems I’ll see so little of Gades, I should take this opportunity.’

  Going out by way of the elegant marble entrance, we met up with Honorius’s men, mingling with the governor’s off-duty guards, and with Aldra Safrac de Aguilar.

  The dark man’s long face metamorphosed to a smile. And since he claimed he knew Gades well, having been here before, I thought it wise enough to let him show us its society.

  I heard none of Aldra Videric’s secrets, nor anything useful to Honorius, but I did discover the potency of the local wine.

  The times when I have trusted any court far enough to get drunk are remarkably few. My previous experience of hangovers in Taraco was due to wine being forced on the King’s Freak for the amusement of others.

  Still, the buttery-hatch to the Governor’s kitchens stood open, and the feeling of sitting in company in the Great Hall and dulling my morning headache with small beer and oatmeal porridge was not unpleasant. I found myself with elbows on the stained yellow linen of the trestle tables, talking casually with those of Honorius’s men I knew less well.

  Gades seems provincial, after Rome, Venice, Alexandria…

  That evidence of my own snobbery made me chuckle out loud, and bury myself in my mug of nettle beer while conversations went on around me.

  A hand fell on my shoulder. ‘Ilario!’

  Momentarily lost in studying the walls–considering how much more modern tapestries or even frescoes would look than the red-and-ochre chevrons painted on the stonework–I almost overturned the trestle table and bench as I pushed myself up and away.

  ‘Ilario, no!’ A man held up his hands. He wore a green demi-gown, and had only a dagger at his belt. ‘No harm intended!’

  ‘Safrac.’ My grip on the leather and metal of my dagger’s hilt pressed hard enough to turn skin white. It took me three tries to get the point back into the mouth of the scabbard, and sheathe the blade.

  Safrac de Aguilar’s dark eyes smiled, the rest of his face returning to customary melancholy. ‘I was warned how unwise it is to disturb you. Forgive me: you don’t always look like a knight. But you’re late! Your mother’s already left for the meeting.’

  ‘My mother?’

  I would be shocked, were I not bewildered.

  Rosamunda is here with Videric?

  Picking up the leather mug of nettle beer and draining it covered how a nervous shiver went through me, just at the mention of that woman. I tried not to sound as bewildered as I felt. ‘What “meeting”? I don’t know about any meeting!’

  Safrac de Aguilar frowned. ‘A few moments ago? I met Aldra Videric, and heard him bidding Aldro Rosamunda hurry, because “Ilario is there already”.’

  As a slave, I would continue to listen. Or ask apparently innocent leading questions, until I knew what was happening. But I have my freedom.

  I took hold of Safrac de Aguilar’s arm through the fine green velvet. Rodrigo thinks this man honest and incorruptible. I hope he’s correct.

  I lowered my voice below the level of general conversation in the hall. ‘Were you supposed to overhear this, Safrac? Or was it an accident?’

  He gave me the thoughtful look of a man who’s been at court many years.

  ‘I think, accidental. To be deliberate…It would have needed too much luck. They could hardly know I’d hear that and then encounter you now. You think he intends–what?’

  ‘If I could tell you that, I would.’ I found myself frowning. ‘Videric never does anything without it being aimed at somebody.’

  I see only two options here. And if it isn’t me—

  ‘I certainly don’t know of any meeting,’ I said. ‘Did Aldro Rosamunda seem to know? Or was it a surprise to her?’

  Safrac de Aguilar’s brows dipped in concentration, a maze of lines creasing his forehead.

  ‘She knew,’ he said finally, giving me a shrewd look. ‘Or I believe she did. But…You could, perhaps, have been told of this last night, and…forgotten during the celebrations?’

  Drunk as a fiddler’s bitch, they call it. My head did feel as if I’d been drinking the beer they put down in pans for his mastiff, all the night the fiddler plays. Truthfully, it was no large amount unless to an unseasoned drinker. And my head was clear enough last night.

  I forget nothing concerning my mother.

  I bit at my lip. The small pain helped me focus. ‘There’s no “meeting”. If Rosamunda thinks there is…But she’s not a fool, she knows there may be agents of Carthage here! Why would she go–Safrac, did either of them say where I was to meet her?’

  My thoughts were a tumble of fears: Videric sending Ramiro Carrasco on a murderer’s errand to Venice; the Carthaginian agent whose name I never knew dying on Torcello Island; Hanno Anagastes’ armed guards surrounding Aldro Rosamunda, putting her under arrest.

  Frustrated, I protested, ‘There are too many rooms in this palace to search!’

  ‘There’s a hall with a fountain,’ Safrac de Aguilar emerged from his reverie and interrupted. ‘That was where Aldra Videric said you were waiting for the lady Rosamunda, now.’

  The breath went out of my chest, leaving ice and heat. A solid knot of cramped muscle and lung.

  The fall of silver water; the ringing fall of steel.

  Clear in my mind as that day twelve months ago.

  If she expected to meet me–yes, she would go to such a place.

  ‘You know the Egyptian, Rekhmire’?’ I barely waited for de Aguilar’s assent. ‘Go and tell him what you heard. If not him, then Lord Honorius. Tell them–to be cautious.’

  Safrac de Aguilar looked alarmed. ‘Where will you be, Ilario?’

  ‘Finding this hall with a fountain!’

  For all his choked protests, he gave me brisk directions; and strode away from me towards the palace’s guest-chambers.

  I walked, because running attracts attention. If I ran out of the hall, there are those who would follow. Noblemen’s sons, out of curiosity. Guardsmen, wondering what the fuss is about. The women servants who clean, who see everything and everybody.

  But a preoccupied fast walk attracts little attention.

  I should be thinking–planning—

  I don’t even know what I expect him to do!

  Videric has lied to her.

  I don’t know why.

  Breath hissed hot in my lungs. The gangways and stairs of Zheng He’s ship had kept me fit. But I’d guessed wrong about the time: it was well past noon. Gades’ heat as the sun burns around to the second half of the day is nothing to be sprinting in.

  Fifteen minutes at a pounding run, once out of the public eye up corridors and down stairs, wondering if I had mistaken Aguilar’s directions–and a stone colonnade opened up in welcome cool.

  I slowed to a painful half-trot.

  Think. Think what you can do—

  Twelve months ago I walked another marble-floored corridor, with Aldra Videric; his blue and white linen robe swirling at his heels as he strode.

  The sound of a fountain reached me from an open hall ahead.

  The sound of a slap, and the flat clatter of a second-rate dagger skittering across the marble floor—

  What will he do? Sell her to Carthage’s highest bidder, because they
think they can make use of her? Then have one of Carrasco’s brothers assassinate her on board the ship?

  Ridiculous speculations made me feel as if my head would burst.

  I could understand if he attacked me. What does he want with her?

  And why is it I still think I should protect her?

  Pain more agonising than the cramp in my ribs came from the immediate realisation.

  She wants me to forgive her.

  But not for my sake. For hers.

  Now that the cathedral penitence means no gossip will ever forget I came out of her womb, she wants to appear magnanimously accepting of her monstrous child.

  But she would meet me secretly because, no matter what she pretends in public, she is ashamed of me.

  I slowed.

  Heat bounced down the white walls from the clerestory windows, high above; a breeze barely penetrated. That was not the only reason I was sweating.

  How rash will Rekhmire’ say I’m being?

  I thought it so clever to show Videric in pigment: ‘You love her but she never loved you; never will.’ So clever—!

  A coldness went through my body and made my hands heavy. My fingers prickled. I thought desperately: No, Videric isn’t a stupid man, he will have realised the truth before now. Years ago!

  And you were the one who thought it so clever to push his face into it. What might that provoke a man to do?

  Sound caught my attention.

  Movement?

  This doorway was a round Roman arch, the keystones white, outlined with gold paint. A beaded curtain hung down across the opening. Kicking off my scandals, I padded over the cool tiles, silencing my breathing.

  The beads made an impenetrable barrier until I stood with my nose all but touching them. Vision altered: I saw clearly through their blur into the hall.

  The fountains arced silver into the afternoon light, water spilling out of a jug held by a marble nude.

  Terracotta pots held plants. The scent of the place was subtle: moist soil, green leaves…choked pipes.

  I could see the textures of leaves, the patterns of edges; all things for which–before now–I would have reached for my drawing-book. ‘Learn to see,’ Masaccio said to me, one night in the taverna, his hand sketching flawlessly by candle-light. ‘You see too much detail, Ilario. You draw it all. And you give it all the same importance. Look to see what parts of a thing are necessary: show only that.’

  Now all I could do was stare through the blurry green and shimmering silver at Videric.

  He knelt beside Rosamunda, where she lay supine on the floor.

  His hands moved, busy at her mouth. Tying something.

  Agag.

  Light through the fretwork stone ceiling shone down on pillars and fountain-basins. And glistened off her eyes as she blinked.

  Christus Imperator, she’s still alive!

  Three or four other men stood behind Videric where he knelt. They wore the livery of guards. There were no household badges on arm or cap. Evidently they waited for orders.

  Rekhmire’ will be behind me, sooner or later.

  I swept the bead curtain clattering aside, and strode into the hall.

  16

  There’s no blood.

  It was the first thing I noted. No blood; no broken bones protruding through stretched-white skin. A slave learns how to see the crucial things in the first instant.

  An absent part of my mind wondered, Is that what Masaccio meant about an artist’s vision?

  Her wrists and ankles were already bound; she squirmed and whimpered in an attempt to get free of Videric’s hands. Two red bruises marked the sides of her jaw, where a thumb and forefinger might have gripped her. Nothing more. Her silk robes were rucked up about her knees, but clearly from struggling against being subdued, rather than rape. Sweat beaded across her unlined forehead. She strained against her arms, tied before her; Videric looked up from binding her kerchief into her mouth with silk rope.

  Looked directly at me.

  One of the other men started forward.

  ‘Wait.’ Videric spoke with a quiet intensity that froze the man where he stood.

  I stared squarely down at Videric. ‘I didn’t know how vindictive you could be. But you can let her go now, since you’ve got me here.’

  His face altered. If his control had not been perfect, it would have been a smile. He murmured, ‘Nor did I know that you thought the world centred upon you.’

  ‘Don’t be naive.’ I thought it the surest way to shake him. ‘Everybody thinks that.’

  Videric turned his head as if I didn’t exist. His attention focused on Rosamunda, on the floor. The small choked sound he made would not have carried as far as the guards wearing his livery.

  The men were all much similar: Iberian, rather than Visigoth Carthaginian; middle-aged soldiers in doublet and hose, with riding-boots fastened up to their belts, and no surcoat over their mail hauberks. No crest, no coat of arms, no insignia. Nothing to link them to Videric’s estates.

  The glances between them told me they were his. I have seen similar looks between Honorius and Orazi.

  ‘What’s the matter? Do you need four men here to kill me? Can’t you do your own murders?’

  Videric’s expression didn’t change. I didn’t expect it; he’s too good a politician to allow that. But I caught the glance one of the men-at-arms shot at his captain. It wasn’t, ‘Damn, Ilario knows!’ It was, ‘You didn’t say you were asking that of us.’

  If he really doesn’t want revenge on me, when it’s freely offered—

  I must have made him desire her death.

  If he’s off-balance, I may find out more. I nodded at the soldiers, speaking with a hope of keeping Videric unsettled. ‘Men in a jealous rage don’t usually bring four witnesses. If you’re not killing my mother, what are you doing to her?’

  The Aldra Videric smiled appreciatively. He glanced up and back, at his captain. ‘A shame there’s not room for two…’

  The man-at-arms smiled as one does at a lord’s joke.

  ‘Whatever you’re doing to her—’ I kept moving, coming closer to him, and Rosamunda, every moment. ‘—why aren’t you doing it to me? I don’t believe the–the man who told me about this “meeting” I’m supposedly having with my mother is one of your pawns. But since I’m here…why not kill me instead?’

  The sun falling through the lattice-patterned ceiling made Videric’s fair hair and beard glint. He came lightly up onto his feet, as if he were my age, and shrugged. ‘Why not you? Honorius. And Alexandria, to a degree. You have powerful friends that make killing you unwise. Even an accident would be suspect.’

  ‘But not for her?’ I didn’t look down as I reached Rosamunda. The toes of my studded sandals touched the shoulder of her robe. I looked at him across my mother’s body. ‘She has no powerful friends herself that aren’t also your friends. So there’s nothing to stop you.’

  Videric laughed.

  It caught halfway through, as if it snagged on something in his throat.

  ‘I’m not killing her.’ The Aldra Videric rubbed the cuff of his robe across his red lips. For the first time in years, he seemed to see me–to see Ilario, rather than the King’s slave, or his wife’s secret bastard. ‘And now you’re here, I suppose not you either…Not everything is about murder, Ilario.’

  He looked at me with sardonic humour, as if he couldn’t understand why I didn’t smile in return.

  The time will come when I don’t hear the word ‘murder’ and see Masaccio’s face in front of me, throat crushed in front of my eyes. But not today.

  ‘Is it my fault? Did what I painted make you do this?’

  The hall was silent except for the strained, muffled breathing of Rosamunda. And the noises she made in her throat.

  I did not need to hear words to know she intended ‘Yes: your fault: free me!’

  Videric’s captain was a new face since I’d left Taraco; I didn’t recognise him, but he had in-country features, and he
was a little younger than the other soldiers. Recently promoted, I guessed. He would be a man loyal to Videric, who had been taught to blame me for his lord’s initial forced resignation as First Minister.

  The captain turned his head towards Aldra Videric, plainly requesting orders. Kill the intruder? Subdue it?

  For three heartbeats, I was dizzy with the realisation that, had I been a slave still, stepping into this room would have been immediate suicide.

  I flinched, momentarily. Two of the men-at-arms exchanged glances, cheered by that. The hermaphrodite isn’t the knight it was trained to be was plain in their thoughts.

  Videric made a gesture with his hand.

  The clink and spatter of fountain-water did not drown out boots on the tiles. The men-at-arms went to take up stations at the remaining archways. I might escape if I spun around and dived back the way I came. But I wouldn’t bet money.

  And I’m not leaving.

  Holding Videric’s gaze, I sank down on one knee by Rosamunda. Peripheral vision gave me the ability to pull at the knots of her silk gag.

  Videric quite deliberately made no move from where he stood. He turned the palms of his hands to me, to emphasise that he held no weapons. I wondered if he knew that it seemed to make him appear defenceless in other ways.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said, ‘Wait.’

  ‘“Wait.”’ I sounded like every speculative, unbelieving courtier I ever met in Rodrigo’s court.

  ‘Hear me out, first. Then…’ He sighed and shrugged. Not quite ‘your folly be on your own head’, but something with more sorrow and resignation in than I was used to hearing from my step-father.

  He’ll tell you what you want to hear.

  This man who lied, a year ago, about Rosamunda desiring to see me. When it was his own orders that she wait and kill me.

  He looks different.

  I’d paid attention to him physically, painting him in the new style. Masaccio taught me ratios: the placing of the eye according to the position of ears, jaw, nose. Given Masaccio’s emphasis that first a painter needs to see–and wanting to understand him–I had studied my stepfather as lines, planes, shades, edges…