Ilario, the Stone Golem (67 page)

‘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.’

329

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 Rosa-

munda 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

330

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.

331

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 all

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 332

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.

333

‘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