Ilario, the Stone Golem (71 page)

Although in what detail, and how accurately, I couldn’t guess.

You couldn’t tell from Orazi’s face, or the others, that anything out of

the ordinary was taking place. I thought,
They
all
know
. But they won’t embarrass the Lion of Castile.

Rekhmire’ stood as impassive as any carved sandstone, and I thought

him thinking furiously.

The lean, soldierly man my father squinted at Rosamunda as if he

squinted into a desert wind, abrasive with particles of sand. She didn’t

take her eyes off him.

I recognised the split-second hesitation, and that look Honorius wore.

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This is something I would have two or three times a week, when I was

Rodrigo Sanguerra’s Freak. The look that at first goes straight through

you, not recognising you at all. And a moment later seems to ask,
Why

does
that
person
seem
to
know
me?
, and
No,
surely,
it
can’t
be
; before they greet me with a rush of relief at the recognition – ‘
Ilario!
I
didn’t
know
you,
dressed
as
a
—’ man or woman, whichever the case might be.

Honorius’s hesitation lasted barely longer than it took to draw breath.

With a rush of relief, he exclaimed, ‘Rosamunda!’

She went as red as if she’d been slapped.

Queen of the Court of Ladies, yes. Beautiful, poised, glorious: yes.

But forty-five isn’t twenty.

Is
so
different from twenty, it seems, that an old lover might not recognise that Rosamunda in this woman standing before him.

And two of us knew her well enough to know it had cut her like knives.

Slowly, Honorius said, ‘I wouldn’t have known you.’

Rosamunda made a little noise, and attempted to hide her bound

hands in the silk folds of her skirt. Her fingers were shaking.

‘I’m no different,’ she whispered.

Honorius made a face, half-smile and half-grimace. ‘That might be

true.’

She turned her head and looked at Videric.

Not as a wife looks at the husband she’s wronged; not as a

sophisticated woman of the court looks at her husband in the socially

embarrassing presence of an ex-lover. But plainly and simply for

reassurance.

Videric stepped up to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Too

quietly to be heard but by her and me, he said, ‘You look the same as the

day you turned twenty. Don’t expect anything but malice from this

man.’

She half-turned her head, in a gesture that was triply graceful because

unstudied, and rested her forehead against the lower part of Videric’s

chest.

He looked down at her in the same way that a man looks at a wild

animal that, for whatever reason, and for however long, trusts him far

enough to touch her.

‘I ought to horsewhip you,’ Honorius ignored my stepfather and

growled, taking a step forward. His only attention was for Rosamunda.

‘You tried to kill that baby—’

I stepped forward, interposing myself between them, just as Rosa-

munda cried out in outrage behind me:

‘
You
left me with the child!’

‘I would have taken you. I would have taken Ilario.’ His pain was

bewildering to him, you could see it. After so long, he didn’t expect to hurt like this.

349

And if this wasn’t the first time in twenty-five years, perhaps he

wouldn’t.

Honorius shook his head. ‘I remember your eyes as brown. They’re

. . . not.’

‘It doesn’t matter how many brown-eyed wenches you tumbled,’ she

snapped. ‘
You’d
never be the one with a big belly!’

My father looked frankly bewildered, and a little cross. ‘Women have

been having babies since the world was made. You can manage as well as

the others, can’t you?’

I raised my voice.

‘Father, you didn’t call me a whore for having got Onorata. I suppose

I’m the only one here who
can
lay down as a man, and then get up with a

child in my belly.’

That stopped the shouting.

What am I doing defending Rosamunda?

I saw how it defused something of the tension between them. There

were still lines of force in the hall of the fountains, where desperate looks

pinned people together: Honorius staring at Rosamunda, Rosamunda

pressing her bound hands against Videric’s thigh, Rekhmire’ crossing the

tiled floor and putting his hand on my shoulder.

His flesh was warm, heavy; and at once greeting and warning.

‘I never thought I’d see my mother and father together in the same

room,’ I said.

Rosamunda stirred, a swathe of black hair coiled across her forehead

and cheek where it fell down from her crown of braids. Her eyes flicked

quickly from side to side. ‘Saints and Sacred Beasts! I was
right
. You have only to stand in the same room together, you two. My lord—’

The sudden appeal, turning her head and looking up at Videric,

brought home to me as nothing else could that these two have worked

together to plot their rise at court.

That for all the people see Videric as necessary to Rodrigo Sanguerra,

Rosamunda has performed Christ knows how much of the unattributed

work and support.
And
now
we’re
sending
her
away
.

Rekhmire’ was my best choice. I touched his arm, drawing his

attention. His skin was hot and a little sweaty. I said, ‘Find me a way that

she doesn’t have to go into exile.’

All three of them looked at me: Honorius, Videric, and my mother.

Honorius with the long-suffering bad temper that he evidently only just

controlled, not leaping in to say,
She
birthed
you,
but
that’s
all;
you
owe
her
nothing!
Rosamunda with the same puzzled bad temper with which she’d

regarded me in Hanno Anagastes’ court.

Only Videric worried me. What he hid under that bland exterior was

enough experience to guess more than
I
could about my impulse not to

let my sometime-mother be imprisoned on Jethou.

‘Why am I to find an answer?’ Rekhmire’ sounded disgruntled, as well

350

as still out of breath. ‘If you’re saying what I think, it seems a perfectly reasonable solution. It’s not as if an innocent woman is being condemned

to captivity.’

Rosamunda interrupted without appearing to notice that the Egyptian

spoke. Her eyes were fixed on Honorius. ‘You married, didn’t you?’

I caught Videric’s stifled surprise. I wondered if he was thinking what I

was:
I
didn’t
know
she’d
kept
track
of
Licinus
Honorius
. . .

‘Who told you that?’ Honorius sounded more interested than

annoyed.

‘After you came back and started to renovate the estate. There was a

lot of gossip in the women’s court. One of my friends has a cousin who

was married to – well, it doesn’t matter. But with the property, and their

suspicion that you must have brought money back from Castile with

you, there were enough of them with available daughters that they

needed to know.’

She blinked, as if what took place in the women’s court had happened

centuries ago, although it couldn’t have been more than twelve months.

‘Licinus, what did she die of?’

It sounded odd to me to hear him called that. Shifting uncomfortably

on the hard floor, I thought,
Why
did
he
never
invite
me
to
call
him
by
his
personal
name?
Or did he think I was more comfortable with ‘Honorius’?

Honorius spoke with the reserve I associated with the man. You would

not have known he and Rosamunda had been lovers – but then, I

doubted they had, in more than the carnal sense.

‘Her name was Ximena. You’ve obviously heard,’ he added. ‘She died

bearing our second child. Our first had died before it could be baptised.

This one . . . ’

‘Took her with it,’ Rosamunda completed. She lifted her tied wrists,

smoothing her hair out of her pale face with the backs of her hands.

‘That would have been me. If I’d left with you. They say you had

another wife before this Ximena. Did you kill her too?’

As dryly as a desert wind, Licinus Honorius observed, ‘You
are
well informed. I used to know better than to underestimate the Ladies’ Tower

in any castle . . . No, Sandrine died of low-land sickness. She never

carried a child long enough for it to distress her when it passed.’

Rosamunda’s expression held a great deal of doubt on that point; I

supposed mine might, also. And, to my surprise, Rekhmire’ looked as if

he would have spoken, under other circumstances.

‘Ilario is my only living son or daughter.’ Honorius raised a brow, still

with his gaze on Rosamunda. ‘In fact, both son
and
daughter—’

‘And like all men, you wanted an heir. A true son.’ Rosamunda looked

dissatisfied.

‘Not all men,’ I said. ‘And you of all people should know that! Since

you’re standing between two men who prove different to that.’

Rosamunda sighed.

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For the first time, she looked at me without dislike; only with a tired

melancholy that made me truly believe her a handful of years past forty.

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t help. Two of you . . . It means

nothing, not when everybody else is different. Ilario,
don’t
let
them
do
this
to
me
.’

I caught Rekhmire’’s glance. With an acknowledging look to my father

and my stepfather, I touched Rekhmire’’s arm, and drew him closer to

the fountain, where the noise of the falling water would obscure what we

said if we spoke quietly.

‘It’s what every man wants,’ he said. ‘Your enemy, dependent on
your

actions. Ilario . . . don’t let it prove too intoxicating. And remember how

very much people dislike being done a good turn.’

‘I remember helping you with your knee,’ I said acidly. ‘You
still
owe

me for my patience, book-buyer.’

Rekhmire’ grinned at me.

I stopped smiling. ‘Be honest with me. What is it I’m not seeing? And

– is there any alternative, for her? It must have happened before; she

can’t be the
only
wife any man has ever been vulnerable through.’

‘My lord Videric moves in the same circles as royalty, now, since he’s

as necessary to Taraconensis as people think he is. We’re not discussing

a minor nobleman and Carthage wheedling out occasional secrets. If she

can be adequately threatened, the Fourteenth Augusta and Third Leptis

Parva sail for Gades, and come marching up the Via Augusta to Taraco.

The King-Caliph’s talking of a
reconquista
, now; of taking Iberia back into the Carthaginian Empire . . . Taraconensis wouldn’t be their ideal

foothold, but it
would
give Carthage a land-border with the Franks.

Somewhere to mass their legions, before they send them against Europe.

King-Caliph Ammianus and Hanno Anagastes will take advantage of

anything to get them through that gate. They won’t kill Aldro

Rosamunda – she’s too valuable as blackmail – but they will take her and

hurt her, if they can find her. And then set her free to come back to Aldra

Videric, with the knowledge that they’ll maim her worse the next time.

It’s easier to think of someone dying than it is to think of caring for them

when they come home with their eyes gouged out, or half their skin

flayed away . . . ’

The shimmering cold water of the fountain was all that held me from

vomiting. Cold, clear, clean. The sick sweat left my forehead after a

while. I rested the palms of my hands against the cold marble.

‘And we can’t guard her?’

‘You should know the answer to that, Ilario.’

Any guard that’s strong enough to keep her safe is strong enough to

make a prisoner out of her. And even if she were in Rodrigo Sanguerra’s

deepest dungeon, a servant or a slave would know where she was, and

could be bribed into telling. Often for what would seem like a

ridiculously small sum, if you’re not the slave or servant.

352

Faith is a better barrier. Faith will keep Sister Maria Regina shut off