Ilario, the Stone Golem (14 page)

couldn’t know!’

I flicked back in the small hand-sewn pages of my sketchbook,

abandoning an effort to draw the standing gondolier steering his craft in

towards the steps. I found the page I wanted, and turned it towards

Carrasco.

He looked down at his own face, in a preliminary sketch for Gaius.

‘Look at that, Ramiro. Tell me that I
didn’t
know you weren’t doing this of your own accord.’

His collared neck straightened; he stared at me with fierce affront.

‘
Drawing
me? You couldn’t know anything about me!’

Studying and reproducing the planes and features of a face, time after

time, seeing how it subtly alters with each emotion . . . Once, I stopped

midway through a charcoal drawing of Ramiro Carrasco, when I had put

in the tone of his face, and only an outline of his hair. It made him look

white-haired. I had thought,
This
is
how
Carrasco
will
look
when
he’s
fifty
.

I stated, ‘You’ve never killed a man.’

I saw the shock on his face.

‘If you can fight with a sword, it’s because you saw an arms master for

a few weeks while you were at your university, and any new recruit

would kill you inside two minutes. You were planning to stick a knife

into me, because anybody can do
that
, surely? You’ve been delaying, delaying all the time, terrified that the Aldra would carry out his threats –

I don’t know what reports you’ve been sending back to him, but I know

you wanted to convince him you were just about to succeed. All the time,

just on the verge of success.’

The muscles that surround the jaw bone relax under shock. His mouth

hung very slightly open. It wasn’t fair that it gave him a look that was faintly comic. Under these circumstances, that could move one to pity.

‘Yes, you could kill a man in self-defence,’ I hazarded. ‘No, you’re not

an assassin. And Videric wouldn’t care what being a murderer would do

to you. Why would he? Here you were – educated, so capable of taking a

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place with Federico; capable of being blackmailed, therefore controllable;

capable of getting close to the man-woman Ilario. You were perfect. But

just . . . not a natural assassin.’

Carrasco’s voice cracked with desperation. ‘Let me go back to

Taraco! I don’t even know if they’re alive, if my father—’

‘They’re better protected from the Aldra while you’re here.’

Videric would calmly and coldly work out that his weapon had turned

in his hand, I knew. And would I put it past Videric to go into a white rage, and order his serfs slaughtered out of rage? It would be stupidity.

But . . .

Carrasco stared at me. I read the same knowledge in him. Yes, he

knows Videric well. And wishes he didn’t.

‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I wish I could.’

‘You’re sorry?’ Ramiro Carrasco’s voice went up an octave.

By his side, Attila looked thoughtfully at the chain-leash’s end. I shook

my head. The exchange went right past Ramiro.

Carrasco spluttered, ‘You’re
sorry
? I tried to smother you!’

‘Yes. I do remember.’

The caustic remark was very much in his own vein. It stopped him

dead.

‘Ilaria . . . You can do . . . whatever you like to me, can’t you? If you

want revenge for me frightening you . . . ’

He didn’t say
for
hurting
you
; he was perceptive enough to know which I would resent the more.

I shrugged. ‘That’s one of the things about being a slave.’

‘And I can’t . . . ’ His dark eyes blinked against the spring sun, running

clear water after the jail’s permanent dimness. ‘I can’t thank you for

perhaps saving my family’s lives, either. Because you’ll just think I’m

trying to escape a punishment.’

‘That’s another of the things about being a slave.’ I moved forward as

the gondola came in to the steps. Looking back as I took Tottola’s

extended hand, I said, ‘With slavery as you find it in Iberia, nothing

honest can be said between slave and master.’

Attila thrust Ramiro Carrasco into the boat behind me, the chain

drawn up tight enough that he had the secretary-assassin by the neck,

iron biting into the secretary’s prison-filthy flesh.

Honorius and Rekhmire’ appeared on the Alexandrine house’s jetty

before we got within fifty yards of the landing stage. They watched in

silence, one standing beside the other, as the gondola glided up and we

disembarked.

‘What?’ Honorius pointed at the stinking and wet figure crouching in

the bottom of the boat – wet because Ramiro Carrasco de Luis had not

entirely believed Tottola wouldn’t let go if he jumped over the side of the

gondola.

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Ramiro Carrasco coughed, shivered, and spat over the side, wiping his

running nose.

The royal book-buyer chimed in, ‘
Why?
’

‘I bought him,’ I said – and watched comprehension spread over their

faces.

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11

‘You’re a wonder!’ the Captain-General of Castile and Leon grinned,

pulling me up out of the gondola and into his arms, and swinging me

around in such a way that my scars pulled painfully – which I would not

have told him for the world.

‘Well done!’ Rekhmire’ gave me a pat on the shoulder, when he might

reach me. ‘Ilario – that was almost
clever
.’

‘Why, thank you!’ I mimed being offended, and gasped a little, under

the impression my ribs might crack. Honorius released me. I added, ‘All

I need to do now is get word back to Videric, to tell him.’

A thought made me grin.

‘A shame Federico decided not to go back to Taraco – I would like to

have seen his face, when I asked him to carry the message . . . ’

Rekhmire’ openly snickered.

‘Shall we go in?’ I added.

‘What about him?’ Honorius jerked a thumb at my purchase.

‘He’s a slave, he has to be seen to be treated like one.’ I glanced at Rekhmire’. ‘I was thinking – along the lines of the Alexandrine model.

Once we get out of Venice.’

The book-buyer smiled, and inclined his head.

Honorius continued loud congratulations while I introduced Carrasco

to the kitchens and the soldiers, with stern words that the man should not

be injured because valuable. I thought one or two of them entirely likely

to give him more than a brain-fever, if left unwarned; attempting to

murder a woman in child-bed is comfortably different enough from a

soldier’s killing that they can safely feel the utmost contempt.

Even if the woman is not wholly a woman.

The late frost bit at my fingers as I returned from the courtyard,

having shown Ramiro Carrasco the iron bars on the gate. I sent him off

to Sergeant Orazi to be found a place to sleep. Rekhmire’ came up with

me on my way to the main room, his steps more uneven now because of

his less-than-successful attempts to use a walking-stick instead of his

crutch.

‘Out with it!’ I directed, when we had reached the room and he had

not yet spoken.

Honorius looked up curiously from a joint-stool by the fire, evidently

equally desirous of hearing the answer.

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‘I admire your initiative.’ Rekhmire’ racketed over to the room’s only

armed chair, lurching like a town drunk at midday. ‘To conceive of

buying Carrasco – and to put the plan into operation—’ He gave a faint

smile. ‘It’s admirable. It’s worthy of a book-buyer.’

‘Spy!’ Honorius rubbed his fingers hard under his nose, preventing

himself from laughing. He had ceased to be entirely clean-shaven in the

last few days, and was growing a moustache. I assumed he thought it

would disguise him, at least to be less recognisable at a distance. It came

out a little greyer than the hair of his head.

Having an ear for nuance, at least where the Egyptian is concerned, I

smiled at my father, and turned back to Rekhmire’.

‘But? “It’s admirable” – and I hear a
but
.’

Rekhmire’ sighed. ‘But it won’t work.’

68

29

The four words dropped into the room and brought about complete

silence.

‘
What
do
you
mean,
it
won’t
work!
’

I checked the door and window by reflexive action. No Ramiro

Carrasco; no guards or servants other than Honorius’s trusted men.

‘How can it not work?’

‘Consider.’ Rekhmire’ steepled his fingers in the old way he had had in

Rome. ‘If you die, Carrasco is legally tortured, and Videric’s secrets

come out. If
Carrasco
dies – nothing.’

I stared at him. Able only to echo. ‘If Carrasco dies . . . ’

‘Dies
first
. All you’ve done,’ Rekhmire’ observed, ‘is given Videric a motive to have Carrasco assassinated before he kills you.’

Into the stunned quiet, Honorius’s voice intoned, ‘Shite.’

‘I—’ The inescapability of it flooded in on me.

‘I wondered why he had been left alive,’ Rekhmire’ added, shifting

uncomfortably on the hard chair. ‘It wouldn’t have been difficult to get a

man into the prison to silence him. Evidently Videric didn’t consider him

a danger. If you’ve made him into one . . . ’

The Egyptian shrugged.

‘ . . . You ensure he will kill both of you.’

‘
No
.’ I slammed one fist into my other hand. ‘I thought it out, every step of it! It
will
work. It’s a stand-off. All the while I have Ramiro Carrasco, Aldra Videric can’t touch me!’

‘All the while you
have
Carrasco,’ the Egyptian emphasised softly. ‘I grant you, it works while you do. But what you’ve done now is given

Aldra Videric a reason to kill the slave before he kills you. And the easiest

way to be sure of that, is to kill both you and he together.’

To come so close to safety –
so
close
—

Despair went through me. I pushed it down, out of sight, so that the

two men should not see it when I turned back to them.

Honorius clearly forced himself to sound encouraging. ‘It’s a good

plan, while it works.’

Rekhmire’ very briefly smiled. Knowing him as I did, I thought it was

an appreciation of the irony of the assassin Carrasco now become the

target.

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Frustration washed through me. I thought it no metaphor, now, that

men’s vision goes red when they hate.

‘It doesn’t matter what I do!’ I snarled. ‘He’ll never get back into

power, the King will never take him as First Minister again, but Videric

is just going to keep on sending more men! He’ll send soldiers, he’ll – I

don’t know – bribe a ship’s captain to maroon me – send a proper

murderer who’s efficient enough to sneak through a military guard –

something
. Aldra Videric, he’ll just . . . keep on coming. Keep. On.

Coming.’

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30

There has to be an answer.

I
can’t
see
it.

Venice, which had seemed safe enough while I knew the freeman

Ramiro Carrasco’s location and temper, seemed dangerous now.

I thought there might also be an outside chance that, as a slave, he

could still be able to hire men to kill me. But given the risk to his

extended family back in Taraconensis; I doubted he would attempt that.

But . . . I have no idea who else is here from Taraconensis. Who may

be on the road here, of docking on a ship this minute . . .

No one knocked on my door. Honorius and Rekhmire’ both knew me

better than to think I would want companions. I curled up in the window

embrasure, taking charcoal to a wooden board, and rubbing out

everything I drew that I was unsatisfied with. Which was everything.

Proportion, value, perspective: all eluded me.

Some time towards the evening, when the dusk came swiftly down, a

servant brought a plate of food and a jug and cup. Not until I caught his

individual way of moving in peripheral vision did I realise it was not a servant, but Ramiro Carrasco de Luis.

Not a servant but a slave.

I put the drawing-board down and stretched my legs, uncurling out of

my seated position with spine to the wall. The secretary-assassin stood

by the table, food abandoned, his expression awkward. I wondered why

he was so ill at ease; whether I should be suspicious.