Ilario, the Stone Golem (68 page)

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!’

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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

335

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.

With any other woman, I would have guessed that she ignored me out

of embarrassment, or even shame. Watching her gaze intent on Videric, I

knew Rosamunda saw no one here except the man who she thought had

power over her.

Certainly I will never hear,
I’m
sorry
I
tried
to
kill
you
in
Carthage
.

For her, that’s forgotten; gone.

‘
You
could shout as loudly as she,’ Videric observed. ‘This palace is infested with servants: someone would hear you and raise an alarm. So I

see no reason not to disclose to you what I’m about to do. Then, if you

wish to scream for your friends . . . ’ He shrugged. ‘Captain.’

The captain directing them, the men-at-arms went out through the

archways; nominally out of earshot. If I concentrated, I could hear their

boots shifting on the marble tiles.

‘He’s a trustworthy man,’ Videric said, a nod of his head to the

departing captain’s back, deliberately not mentioning the man’s name.

‘Like Ramiro Carrasco. But I never like to give a man more information

than he ought to hear.’

Trustworthy
for
the
same
reason
as
Carrasco?

I’d trust Orazi or any of Honorius’s men. But if I explain why to

Videric, he’ll regard me as even more of a fool.

‘My mother,’ I said. ‘Your wife. She’s an Achilles’ heel to you. You

can’t keep her at court. She won’t be safe back on your estates.’

I would have touched Rosamunda’s hand to comfort her, if I didn’t

know from her expression that she would jerk them away.

‘You won’t murder her.’ I brought the word out coolly, ashamed a

moment later when Rosamunda’s eyes snapped open and she gazed

about the hall, rumpled and clearly terrified.

Where is Rekhmire’? Where is my father?

I managed to say, ‘This doesn’t leave much, Aldra Videric.’ I wiped at

336

my sweaty forehead. ‘In fact, I don’t see that it leaves anything. If you send her away to any branch of her family—’

Like most of the nobles of the Iberian courts, she has relatives in

Aragon, Castile, Granada, Catalonia, and the Frankish lands beyond.

‘—Carthage
will
track her down. So. Tell me what you have planned.’

Videric nodded slowly. ‘Rodrigo is the only other man to know. I don’t

suppose the King will be in the least surprised to hear that you’ve found

your way into this.’

His smile was oddly poised between sympathy and malice.

‘I’m half inclined to tell you all and let
you
decide, Ilario. Unfortunately, since it seems to need both Rodrigo Sanguerra and myself to keep

the Carthaginian legions at home, I can’t do that.’

‘You’re not so necessary,’ I said coldly. ‘If you died, Rodrigo would

have another man in your place, performing perfectly well, inside three

days.’

Videric smiled. ‘But as you, especially, will have discovered – it doesn’t

matter what the truth is. It matters what people
think
the truth is.

Because that’s what they act on. In fact, my death may well bring the

legions marching up the Via Augusta. So I must hope to be as long-lived

as my grandfather . . . ’

He got abruptly to his feet, pacing, gazing up at the arcing droplets of

water. Stopping in front of both of us, he looked only at Rosamunda.

‘I couldn’t do anything to harm you. You’ve always known that.’

She brought her head up with that artificial arch of the neck that allows

a woman to look up at a man through her lashes. It was familiar enough

that I suspected the court deportment tutor, Dolores, had taught both of

us.
Mother
and
.
.
.
son-daughter
.

She fixed an intense gaze on him. ‘Don’t do this. Even when I was

with Honorius, it was foolishness, infatuation—’

She cut her gaze across to me.

‘—and I’ve been punished.’

I didn’t hear what she said next; couldn’t decipher the low, intense

conviction in her words. It may have been some effort to recall their

sexual connection to his mind.

‘
I’ve
been
punished
.’ After all this, this is what I am to you?

A piece on the board to be moved, to convince Videric how remorseful

you are towards him.

Why did I imagine anything else? I should know, by now.

Videric’s voice interrupted my dazed state. ‘Hope dies last.’

He might have been referring to himself, or to me. Or to us both, I

thought.

‘Perhaps unfortunately,’ he added, looking down at Rosamunda, ‘this

doesn’t depend on Honorius, or on Ilario’s parentage, or on your

infidelity. If it did, I think I might eventually teach myself to hate you.’

Her huge dark eyes brimmed.

337

I could have told him, even at thirty or forty years younger than he,

that hate is no different to love. Not in the intensity. Not in how much it

occupies your mind, and wastes your time.

Videric shook his head. ‘You’re a weapon, Rosamunda. I’ve been fool

enough to show myself besotted with my wife. That makes you a sword

at my throat. And whatever the story is here, in Carthage the Lords-Amir

know
that you attempted murder—’

‘Because you told me to!’

I winced at the shrill note in Rosamunda’s voice. Shrill as when she

claimed the same thing about my infant exposure:
He
made
me
.

‘No one ever made you do anything,’ I interrupted. ‘You just chose

whichever was easiest at the time and didn’t think of what would happen

after.’

Her eye caught the light as she turned to me. She had the blank-eyed

gaze of a marble medusa.

‘You be quiet, you monster! If it wasn’t for you,
none
of this would have happened to me!’

I drew as much of my hard-earned court composure about me as I

could, and looked at her without shaking, or weeping. I found voice