Ilario, the Stone Golem (12 page)

His back would not stop prickling until he reached his own palazzo, I

guessed.

Perhaps not until he’s out of Venice and across the Alps.

And it is not we who he fears.

The
men
he
will
send
to
deal
with
you
. I heard Federico’s voice in memory as he shoved his way into the Rialto crowds.

‘He won’t be the only man watching his back, now,’ I said.

And it is not only here we face danger.

I looked at Honorius as we turned to retreat under the covered steps of

the Rialto. It is weeks, if not more than a month, since my father received

his letter from King Rodrigo. And, apart from the likelihood that

Rodrigo’s men have eaten Honorius’s estate bare, now, and raided the

others nearest to it . . . it is never wise to have a ruling king as an enemy.

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8

Winter has not ever been my favourite season – at Federico’s old estate,

it meant feet continually numb in freezing mud; at Rodrigo’s court, if

fires burned in great brick hearths big enough to stable a horse, and I had

boots, still, there was more venomous gossip around the Yule fireside

than at any of her time.

Now I watched for spring’s signs with terror.

If they come for me, and this family I have here, who will look after my

child?

Even
if
she
survives,
she’ll
become
a
foundling
in
turn
.

Trees, such as they are in Venezia, remained reassuringly bare of

branch. But close inspection showed buds on every twig of the hazel

beside S. Barnaba, thick and swelling, even if with no green at the tips yet. Travellers crossing the S. Marco square wore the clothes of Greece,

Turkish Tyre and Sidon, Malta, and every other port from

which further ships daily arrived. The Merceria was piled high with

goods of all kinds, the scarcities and excuses of past weeks forgotten as if

unspoken. People walked with heads up, their backs not stooped over

into biting winds, although the sea-cold still drove into our bones.

Rekhmire’ was out every day, rowed up and down this canal and that,

trying for news on whether seas to Constantinople were traversible yet.

Or whether any man had seen a Herr Mainz, late of the Germanies.

Attila taught him a phrase or two to speak to the few northern men in

Venice. Travelling by gondola or other boat kept Rekhmire’ from putting

his weight on his injured knee. He still came back to the embassy

swearing – although whether physical pain occasioned this, or frustra-

tion, I couldn’t say with certainty.

‘Just when I could do with Neferet’s salons,’ he grumbled, one day

without cloud, when I noted it stayed light into the early evening. ‘Your

father can provide me with an introduction to Captain Carmagnola, but

outside of the military world . . . I have never known a man so

uninterested in politics!’

That
was frustration. I grinned. ‘Can I draft a reference from you?

Rodrigo would like to know his throne’s safe, I’m sure.’

‘Safe from your father!’ Rekhmire’ grunted, and dug the tips of his

fingers hard into the misshapen muscle about his right knee. He still wore

Turkish trousers, on the excuse of cold; I had come to the conclusion

54

that it was he who didn’t wish to see his healing injury. The Egyptian

added, ‘He may be distracted from that – it’s conceivable that King

Rodrigo Sanguerra may have foreign troops on the Via Augusta before

July . . . ’

Even when I set foot in Carthage first, under the hissing naphtha

lights, I was obscurely comforted by the thought that Taraconensis lay

behind me in all its familiarity. I might desire not to be in that kingdom,

but it was reassuring to know my past lay untouched behind me. The

thought that it might change – all of it – and the men of Carthage march

north and take control . . .

‘Nothing may happen until next year,’ Rekhmire’ murmured. I knew

he saw me concerned.

‘Assuming we see next year.’ I shrugged. ‘There’s no arguing against

geography – it will be possible to take a ship from Taraconensis to Italy

before it’s safe to sail from Italy to Constantinople. If Videric sends

another Carrasco, or more men like those on Torcello island . . . how

long before they can get here?’

Rekhmire’ frowned, recognising the rhetorical question. ‘You could

persuade nothing out of Lord Federico before he departed?’

Two of Honorius’s more disreputable-looking men-at-arms had

followed Federico and Valdamerca and my foster-sisters to the main-

land, undetected as far as it was possible to judge. Whether Federico was

indeed planning to head over the Alpine passes when they opened, or

whether he would go elsewhere, he was not seen to take any road that led

in the direction of Iberia.

‘I think he was telling the truth – he
is
done with this.’ I looked about

for my roll of cloth with charcoal wrapped in it. ‘I wish I might say the

same.’

My fingers desired to draw. There was a thought in my mind, but I

could not see the shape of it. I went for my sketchbook, to study Onorata

again while she was blessedly asleep in her cot beside the fire, and see if

my mind would work while my fingers were occupied. Rekhmire’ talked

while I looked into the tiny face, transferring the shadows to paper

It could be twelve or thirteen years before I know. Before
we
know.

Whether she gets her menses, or not. Whether she changes, and becomes

like me – although I was always both. But fear hangs over her,

nonetheless, with me for an inheritance. What
is
she?

I reached down, adjusting her woollen blanket, and pictured Neferet

and Leon sailing to the mainland. The long road they would have to

travel. And at the end of it, there are Masaccio’s friends: Brunelleschi,

Donatello, other names he often mentioned while I sat as St Gaius and

listened to him detail their work in sculpture and architecture.

I carefully drew the line of my child’s lip – and by the end of it, an idea

appeared full-blown in my head.

*

Refusing Honorius’s company in a way that he would accept was not

easy. Likewise that of Rekhmire’, despite his difficulty walking. On the

excuse of shopping for a better quality of chalks, I managed to get their

agreement that I would go accompanied by the two largest men of the

guard: Attila and Tottola, of course.

Honorius reminded me, in their hearing, as I walked down with him to

the gondola at the landing stage. ‘That weasel-eyed bastard Federico

may still change his mind and come back! He may think his quickest way

to favour is to travel back to Taraco with your pickled corpse in a

barrel.’

‘Thank you.’ I blinked. ‘A charming image!’

Attila lumbered down into the blue-painted wide gondola, gripping

each side in hands the size of hams. His brother paused – and offered me

a helping hand down onto the stern bench.

I waved, eyes tearing up in the cold wind, and the gondola crept out of

the Dorsodura quarter, and into the busyness of the Grand Canal.

56

9

With Tottola and Attila at my shoulder, I followed the guard down into

the lower rooms and dungeons of the ducal palace.

It was clear why the Doge Foscari wanted to rebuild the palace. The

lower we went down, the more the stone steps glistened with water and

the walls with white nitrous deposits. A damp cold crept into my bones. I

pulled my fur-lined cloak more securely around my shoulders.

There was a reason why I was wearing silk and brocade and was

evidently warm – Honorius’s soldiers might think it a desire to aspire

above my social station, but it was not.

‘Here,’ the jailer said, unlooking a tiny iron-barred wooden door, with

a squeal of ungreased metal. I put coins into his hand, and ducked low to

enter. Attila muttered something at my back – he had not liked their

swords being kept at the guardhouse before we were allowed into the

dungeons.

‘You’re lucky this one’s still here,’ the jailer added. He was a plump

man, with laughter-lines about his eyes; I could imagine him patiently

playing with grandchildren, or explaining duties to a slow apprentice.

The complete blank failure to register the men chained to the walls, I

suppose one develops as a consequence of such work.

‘Lucky,’ he repeated, thumbing the small coins in his palm, and

holding the door to with his other hand. ‘When he come in, his head was

all swole up; then he had a fever.’

Head
swollen
.

The sounds came back to me with hallucinatory clarity: Honorius’s

men striking him in righteous anger, dragging him down the stairs.

I am not the only one to have struck him on the skull, and that jug was

heavy enough to crack bone.

I
do
not
feel
guilty.

The jailer stressed, ‘Hot as anything, he was. If I hadn’t taken pity and

brought him water . . . That’s why he’s still here, see? No man wants to

move him when he’s got jail-fever, it’s the risk
they
might get it.’

I stepped forward, towards the door. Another ducat made its way from

my fingers to the middle-aged man’s hand.

More cheerfully, he said, ‘Tough little bugger, though! He was dizzy

and falling over and raving for a week; it would have killed another man.

Here.’

57

The jailer swung the oak door open, and I saw it as thick through as a

man’s hand is wide.

Muttering, the jailor felt in his pockets for flint and tinder-box, and set

about lighting the torches in the cell. A curve emerged from the darkness:

became a man’s back, where the man slumped on straw on the floor. For

several minutes I watched.

Ramiro Carrasco de Luis did not raise his head.

‘I know what it’s like,’ I said.

He turned over, at last. I saw comprehension on his face.

Hoarsely, he said, ‘Ilaria . . . You were a slave. You know what it’s like

to be chained up like a dog.’

‘And now you know, too.’

The torchlight showed me his face clearly enough. His bruises were

mostly healed. Fading scabs still covered the cuts; the swelling had

finished going down over his right eye. Under his prison-filthy clothes, I

suspected there would be other injuries; a cracked or broken rib or two,

now probably healed.

Ramiro Carrasco rasped, ‘Not so pretty to draw, now?’

‘You’d be more interesting to draw now,’ I said truthfully.

He flinched as I stepped near to him.

I wondered: Have you begun to learn what can happen to a man in a

prison?

‘ . . . Although I don’t know if I could use you for the beaten Christus

Imperator in the same panel as St Gaius.’

Another flicker of expression that was almost a flinch. Painfully,

slowly, he got to his feet. As he straightened up, I thought he might be doing it simply to stand taller than I was, and not be intimidated.

He blinked at me. I saw him realise that we were much of a height.

‘I thought you’d come for a look.’ He attempted a glare of moral

superiority. ‘Poke a stick through the bars.’

He spoke with his gaze on me, ignoring the jailer and Attila and

Tottola as if they were not present. I admired that attempt at dignity.

‘You think I’m petty enough to want to see the man who tried to kill

me chained up in his own filth?’

That wasn’t quite accurate: the cell had basic facilities of straw and a

chamber-pot. But Ramiro Carrasco coloured up all the same; I saw that

clearly in the torchlight. To paint a blush in that light would require

skill.

‘
I
would.’ Carrasco shrugged. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t. I’m as petty as the next . . . woman,’ I

specified, remembering the jailer behind me. ‘You put a pillow over my

face. I was terrified. I don’t much mind seeing you here, terrified

yourself.’

‘I’m not afraid!’

He might be speaking the truth. What I saw, if I looked as close as an

58

artist can, was not necessarily fear. It was very like the desperation I had