by Mary Gentle
As a man, Videric looks older than when I left Taraco, and tired enough that he might not have slept for days.
I said abruptly, ‘You painted your face for the cathedral!’
Videric rubbed at his lower lip again. ‘It was necessary to look as a man should. Women are not the only ones to mimic health with cosmetic aid.’
I knelt down on the tiles, lifting Rosamunda’s head and resting it against my thighs, so that I could support her shoulders with my knees. She stirred, moaning; and looked frantically at me. It felt appalling, unbearable, to see the silk biting into the corners of her lips.
I stroked her soft, braided black hair. The weight of her head was heavy in my lap, and I wondered for a dazed moment if the embroidery on my Alexandrine tunic would leave its pattern embossed in her fine skin.
‘Tell me what this is about.’ I couldn’t keep urgency out of my tone. If Rekhmire’ is following, I need to have heard this first. ‘And–let me untie her wrists. Please. She’s hurting, and she can’t escape, can she?’
Videric smoothed down the folds of his striped linen robe, his features composed in the look of a thoughtful statesman. I recognised it as a mask he often wore in council. Eventually, after my breath congealed and burned in my chest, he gave a casual nod.
Reaching down, I picked at the bindings where I could reach them while supporting her. She made a pained noise through the gag.
Videric seemed in no hurry.
The Ilario who left Taraco a year ago would have run to this meeting without a pause to tell anyone where I’d gone. The same way I left Taraco; the same way I sought out Rosamunda in Carthage.
The silk rope settled into tight, impenetrable knots under my fingertips.
Videric seated himself on the broad marble rim of the fountain beside me. His hand dipped in. He flicked sour water over his neck, cooling himself.
I craned my neck, from where I knelt by his feet.
Videric looked down at me. ‘The problem…is Carthage.’
17
I stared. And spoke into a silence broken only by the spatter of water on marble:
‘Carthage?’
Videric’s captain stepped forward from the archway. I had not seen any order pass between him and Videric. The soldier bent over behind me, reaching around to unbuckle the belt from which I hung my dagger. Still holding Videric’s gaze, I didn’t move. Leather pulled against the fabric of my tunic; I felt the weight of the weapon go missing.
Over the noise of the captain’s boots as he stepped back to the door, I repeated, ‘Carthage?’
‘I realised, with your painted gift.’ Videric tapped his fingers together. ‘What it told me…is perhaps not as important as what I’ve told Carthage.’
‘I didn’t know you were in contact with Carthage—’ I stopped.
His smile had the air of sadness that meant I’d missed his point.
‘Informed by my actions. Last year, you perceive, I had a choice. A scandal comes from Carthage. The First Minister’s wife has tried to kill a slave. As my wife, her crimes reflect on me. I might repudiate this woman, put her aside, call her a barren wife, and stay with the King as his First Minister. But…that is not what I did.’
My fingers carded the loose hair at the back of my mother’s neck, where a braid had come undone. Videric didn’t look down at Rosamunda where she lay stiff and recalcitrant against me, the knot of her bindings irretrievably tight.
I wished I had cut her free before I was disarmed. No matter what it might have precipitated.
Videric gazed, his restless pupils following the fall of fountain-jets.
‘What did I tell Carthage, by what I did do? I told them…that this woman is a gate by which any enemy can enter Taraco and break it. Because any enemy who has control of her has control of me. They have only to threaten her.’
‘You resigned, left Rodrigo Sanguerra, left us to be at Carthage’s mercy if the King-Caliph could manufacture the slightest excuse for sending in the legions…’
Videric’s blue eyes glimmered in the light reflected up from the fountain basin. The water shone all the shadows on his face into the wrong places. ‘And it will be assumed that I will do it again. That whatever threatens my wife, controls me. Whether it’s to make me abandon my post again, or to guide the King in the way that Carthage wishes him to act.’
I thought of Hanno Anagastes, the King-Caliph, the Amirs for whom Rekhmire’ had had me copying scrolls. All of whom assume their sacred right to Iberia.
‘But you can’t–King Rodrigo could–when they see he trusts you—’
‘I’ve returned to court.’ Videric marked off each point on a raised finger. ‘My wife is once again Queen of the Court of Ladies. I’m Rodrigo Sanguerra’s First Minister, reinstated as if I’d never been away. All despite the rumours that my wife tried to kill my…offspring…in Carthage.’
Something flinched, in his expression.
I know he hates being thought the father of a monster.
I had not appreciated, until now, quite how humiliating he would find it to make public the other alternative–to have everyone know that his wife had a child by another man, and that it’s not she who is barren in this marriage.
Videric continued, ‘If she’s such a burden, and I still keep her, refuse to put her aside and marry again—’
His voice caught in his throat.
I stroked the soft hot skin behind Rosamunda’s ear, in apology for speaking as if she weren’t present. ‘They must know the King will protect her as well as you.’
‘Carthage now knows that she needs protecting. That is the fatal weakness I showed.’
He narrowed his eyes as if he looked into sunlit distance, rather than the green shadows of the hall.
‘The Turks, too…Ilario, if any other lord had had his wife threatened, he’d keep her securely behind his own castle walls–and if she died by ambush or assassins, shrug and marry again.’
I wanted to protest it and didn’t. If married couples wish it, all of a woman’s life can take place in the Court of Ladies, and all of a man’s life in the outside world, and their only meeting need be for the begetting of heirs. Few enough men get to see into the women’s court, and see how their women’s friendships, daughters, their politicking for marriages on behalf of their family name, can become their fulfilling life. And a man who rides, hunts, goes to war, and competes for rank and places of power at court with other noblemen; he doesn’t need to know his wife, except carnally. Not if he doesn’t have some leaning towards companionship that priests and lords never taught him. Men alone together talk as if women are children; women alone together speak as if men are not-very-intelligent animals. For nine years I saw it every day, from both sides.
Videric sighed, finally glancing down at where she lay with her cheek against my thigh. ‘If I gave up everything for her once…Men will assume that I can be manipulated by any threat to her. And will assume it correctly. That makes me useless to the state. And I can’t risk Taraconensis coming as close to disaster as we have this last year.’
It made a perfect and clear shape in my mind.
‘I painted the truth. My mother doesn’t love you.’ I ignored her stir of protest. ‘So why, now that you know that—’
‘You painted the truth,’ he repeated, not looking down at Rosamunda. ‘It makes no difference. It never has.’
Because we lie to ourselves, and say it will be different one day.
‘It ought to make a difference.’
Lightly, as if he welcomed a distraction from pain, Videric asked, ‘Which one of them is it?’
‘“Which”?’
‘My spy? Or Queen Ty-ameny’s spy?’ His twist of the lips was very wry, under his moustaches. ‘You desire one of them. Tell me which, so that I can make suitable use of the fact.’
For the first time in many years, I felt inclined to smile grimly at my stepfather.
‘Perhaps not,’ I suggested. ‘But are you telling me, even now, with al
l she’s done–Rosamunda—’
‘I am not the one attempting to comfort the woman who twice tried to kill me.’ Videric paused, a frown indenting his forehead. ‘Three times.’
The dagger in the hall so like this one. The attempt in Carthage. And the baby left out on stone steps, exposed to the snow of a winter’s night. Three times.
Now it was I who could not look down; could only memorise the fine texture of her braids with my fingertips. I felt her warmth, her heartbeat. The skin of her neck had–if only to the touch–the slight slackness of an older woman.
‘Lord Barbas, Caliph Ammianus, Lord Hanno.’ Videric stirred the moving fountain-water with a fingertip. ‘None of them are stupid men. I’ve watched you observe the Governor’s nobles here. I doubt your judgement would be at fault over Carthage–if possibly a little premature. Did you, in honesty, see anything to suggest I’m wrong when I say they will use Rosamunda against me?’
There was no need for me to voice an answer.
‘You said you didn’t trick her into coming here to kill her?’
‘That’s correct.’ Videric wiped his wet fingers across his forehead. A lizard scuttled past Rosamunda’s sandals, skidded, and flicked off behind one of the Roman fern pots.
‘Then what is this?’
Videric spoke as if I hadn’t asked the question.
‘I can’t put her aside as barren or unfaithful. Or rather, I can, but it would not be believed. Some agent of Carthage would kidnap her from her father’s estate, or any other noble’s castle at which she might be a guest. And then it would be plain how much of a fool I am. Perhaps you paid close attention only to half of what you painted? There is more here than her lack of–affection.’
He shook his head, continuing briskly.
‘Rodrigo knows I can’t be forced to choose between my country and this woman. The next time I should merely take poisoned wine. So she cannot be abandoned or divorced.’
‘That doesn’t leave any choices!’ A pain went through my chest and stomach at a sudden thought. ‘Unless–you’ve brought her here so she can watch you drinking poisoned wine now?’
The Aldra Videric’s gaze sharpened enough to let me know I had given myself away. That I have thought of this man as my father for a decade, no matter how distant from me he might have been.
Since perception travels both ways, I could make a good guess that he had at least considered dying here. On those nights when a man can’t sleep, or properly wake, and can only endlessly measure the walls of his trap.
What tilts the balance too much in his favour is that, as ever, it is the men in this world that I understand. I love my mother, but all the women I know seem to have grown up in cages. I find myself avoiding their company, unless, like Ty-ameny, they are powers in their own right. There’s much of me mirrored and reversed in Neferet, that I didn’t like to see. I understand how it is that Videric can love Rosamunda and not know her.
It is not what I want to be–since half of me is woman–but it’s what I am.
Videric said quietly, ‘No, I haven’t come here to kill myself. Despite what men say of it being a coward’s act, I think it would be harder than living and enduring the pain.’ He hesitated. ‘What do you say? You’ve endured enough, King’s Fool. You never hanged yourself or drank poison.’
‘I don’t have Father Felix’s faith.’
Videric nodded. Any other man would have asked if a lack of faith didn’t make self-murder easy, since there would be no punishment for it. Videric’s ready agreement, I thought, meant he looked at it the same way I do–that this sole and only world is very difficult to leave, no matter what; and that the desire to be dead usually passes into shame-faced appreciation of being alive.
‘What will you do? You’ve left yourself nowhere to go, if anyone who can threaten her can control you. And through you, the King.’
His blue gaze stayed on Rosamunda. ‘Do you want her to hear, now? Do you want her to know, while you’re present?’
I already knew enough to be a danger to him the minute I stepped through that archway.
‘Give me back my knife. She shouldn’t be gagged.’ I couldn’t help my disgust showing.
‘Wait until you hear her scream for help. And she may not be permitted that.’
Part of me agreed with him. The part that was half book-buyer by now, I thought, appalled. But the Ilario that lived at Taraco, that knew this woman as a mother–no matter how distant a mother—
‘Take it off,’ I muttered, picking at the knots again and wishing my fingernails were longer. ‘It isn’t…You can’t.’
Even I can’t bring myself to say ‘it isn’t fair’.
Fairness and justice can have nothing to do with what I feel for Rosamunda. Or I might be a greater danger to her than Videric is.
The captain of the men-at-arms knelt down beside me and cut the irrevocably knotted silk bonds of her gag. Something he would not do without Videric’s orders; none of Videric’s soldiers ever would. I looked up to thank my stepfather.
Rosamunda lifted her head from my thigh and rolled away from me, still bound hand and foot, sitting up on the white marble tiles, shaking out her dishevelled hair.
She screamed.
Shatteringly loud, raw-edged, ragged; panicked enough to send ice down my spine. The men-at-arms came to instant readiness, staring around, expecting the King’s guardsmen to come running in—
I pushed myself across the cold, smooth stone, grabbed at her shoulder, and pulled her back up against my chest. I clapped my palm over her mouth, pinching her delicate nostrils between my thumb and finger.
Rosamunda’s scream choked off into a gasp. Into coughs.
I loosened my grip as she tossed her head, as if she could clear her nose and throat that way–and she screamed again.
My hand felt slick with fluids as I clamped it over her nose and mouth again.
I loosed my grip by stages, cutting her off each time I felt the breath of a sound begin. She strained against me, as if she had forgotten how much stronger than an adult woman I am.
At last she slumped back against me, her chest shaking. I felt the hot tears running over my wrist before I realised she was weeping.
None of the men-at-arms had left their posts at the archways.
I held Videric’s gaze. ‘You shouldn’t make me do this. I shouldn’t make me do this.’
Videric spoke quietly. ‘You might feel that you’re a hermaphrodite monster. You grew up in Taraconensis, and you care for it, nonetheless. You wouldn’t have humiliated yourself in the cathedral if that wasn’t true.’
‘I thought it was necessary!’
To my annoyance, I could feel myself hot behind the ears, and in my face; hot and cold with a sick shame at the memory of it.
‘I thought it was all that was necessary! Now you tell me there’s this!’
Videric interlaced his broad fingers and looked down at them. ‘I know these things. I know, also, that she’s…not the only one of us who has tried to murder you. I ask. In this. Will you give me a hearing?’
It’s the portrait, I realised.
He wants to talk to me for many reasons, but one is that I’m the only other person who sees the truth of him and her. Who can he talk to about it? Not even King Rodrigo Sanguerra. And…Not Rosamunda.
‘Mother–Aldro Rosamunda–you’ll have to be quiet.’ The way I held her was oddly like a mother holding its child. Releasing her, I wiped my hand down my tunic. ‘Videric…You tell me how you solve the unsolvable.’
There was a look on his face of amusement and gratitude.
I saw the moment when Rosamunda realised it.
‘You can’t do what he tells you!’ Her voice sounded wet and thick; not its usual melodious contralto. ‘Ilario! You can’t—’
I cut her off before her tone could rise. ‘I’ll hear what he has to say.’
She looked at me as if I were mad enough to be dragged away in sacks and chains and tethered in the lower dungeons,
to amuse the courtiers when they visited the moon-touched. ‘Videric tried to have you killed.’
I shrugged. ‘Yes. But it seems to me–men spend their time hurting one another. I feel a woman should be different. A mother. My mother—’
Rosamunda smiled with complete spite. ‘How long is it since you saw your child, Ilario? Have you seen her today?’
I reckoned the time by the sunlight burning down into the room. Well past Terce.
‘I haven’t seen Onorata since yesterday.’
Because she’s safer with her grandfather. But that has the sound of an excuse. Had I wanted to see her, I need not have slept late.
‘Carrasco will be looking after her,’ I said briskly. ‘He won’t expect me. I have no idea how to be a mother. If I were inclined to thank Christus Imperator for anything, it’s that Honorius knows how to be a father.’
I put out my hand, brushing Rosamunda’s cheek.
She leaned into the touch unwillingly; her expression was spite and triumph mixed. And no guilt. Will she never ask herself why I need to learn how to mother my child?
The truth came up as inexorable as tidewater; not a surprise to me, but this time inescapable. No, she’ll never ask; it would never occur to her even to wonder.
I helped Rosamunda to her feet, as young men are trained to do. And seated her on the marble surround of the fountain, arranging the folds of her skirt as ladies-in-waiting are taught. I dipped my kerchief in the cool water and cleaned her face, which she accepted with the air of accepting something usual from a servant.
I found a second clean kerchief and made a damp pad of it, holding it to her forehead. ‘You should want to hear this too.’
She closed her eyes, without answering.
Videric’s voice broke into my thoughts. I realised I had been standing in front of Rosamunda for several moments, lost in studying her.
‘Wait as long as you like,’ he said, ‘but you won’t hear an apology from her.’
‘An apology? For screaming?’
‘No.’ He looked at me as if I were a fool.
I seated myself slowly beside the spread of her blackthorn-berry-coloured silken skirts. She didn’t look at me. One protest about the situation in which she found herself, then–nothing.
