Ilario, the Stone Golem (52 page)

through from the south windows. I stood in hose and shirt and unlaced

doublet; I must be stinking of sweat and my child, in no condition to see

polite company.

The older man, much my senior, knelt on the hard boards in front of

me and waited.

I thought of the long-ago morning when Father Felix had brought me

into King Rodrigo’s breakfast chamber, to listen to courtiers discussing

the hermaphrodite’s wedding night with a woman.

Now the King’s shoulders were tense under the mole-black velvet of

his doublet, sewn everywhere with the flower and serpent of Taraconen-

sis. If I sketched him, I realised, I would have to dig deep to uncover those emotions behind the forced calm.

But they are there.

257

Bitterly, I said, ‘I couldn’t teach you what humiliation is, Majesty.’

Looking into those darkest of brown eyes, I thought of Ramiro

Carrasco – and realised, in that moment, that Rodrigo Sanguerra of

Taraconensis has no more idea of what to expect as a slave than Ramiro

Carrasco had. And that, as with Ramiro, this is not the key of the matter.

‘You’re on your knees to me, Majesty.’

‘Yes.’ He didn’t flush, but the lines in his face altered.

‘Begging me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because . . . ’ I took a deep breath. ‘Because you want me to see what

you’ll do for Taraco. And then – you want me to do the same thing.’

His shoulders went back as if he were one of Honorius’s soldiers on

parade. It was only in the rigidity of his spine that I could see how much

fury, how much outrage, he suppressed in himself.

‘What you have to do will be humiliating, yes.’ He lifted his gaze, for

the first time coming within a hair’s breadth of true appeal. ‘And I beg,

the King begs you: humiliate yourself, in front of your enemy, because I

need you to. We need you to.’

I went to speak and he interrupted.

‘This is the country in which you were born a bastard, raised and sold

and treated as a slave: I understand this—’

‘You don’t, Majesty.’

He hesitated for the first time. ‘No. But there are people here, all the

same. Some you know. Most you never will. And I ask you: do it for

them. I don’t ask you to do it for me. I may be many things, but I am not

quite such a fool as that.’

He permitted me to stand in silence, then, watching him. Looking at

the King of Taraco, down on his knees to a slave, a freed slave.

It moves me that he’ll do this for the people here.

It moved me still more that I could read, in the lines of his body and

face, quite how much he feared being made to grovel by someone too

young, too spiteful, too unwise not to break another human being.

‘Majesty, do you think I’m risking making you into an enemy because

I want some petty apology?’

The fear left him.

I read in his face that he knew that, whether I agreed or not, I would

not make a king perform the same tricks as a King’s Freak.

I fell on my knees in front of him, as I have so often in my life, but never when he himself was kneeling before me. He reached out to take

my hands. His grip was strong, but I felt him shaking. Kings are not

treated so; undefeated kings, off the field of battle, do not expect to find

themselves on their knees.

‘Forgive me, Majesty!’

‘You ask me? When a slave must have so many justified grudges

against his master?’

258

‘You never did anything any other man wouldn’t have done, sire.’

Rodrigo winced. ‘That is the worst condemnation I have ever had, I

think.’

‘Sire—’

‘Help me up, Ilario. My knees aren’t what they were as a young man.’

By the amount of weight he rested on my arm and shoulder when he

had to rely on his right knee, he was correct in that.

‘I’m sorry I did not treat you better.’ His expression was still a touch

that of a man speaking to a child or a hound, but less so than I had ever

known him. ‘Ilario, if you wish, I will implore you every day now. Do

this. Please.’

‘Stop.’ I was still holding his arm, I found. Bewildered, I didn’t release

it. There were still the muscles of a knight and warrior under the velvet.

‘Majesty, please. Do you think I can’t see what’s at stake?’

‘Well then—’

‘I’m not only afraid for myself.’

Finally I brought myself to let go of his arm, and look at the face I

knew so well.

‘I have a child. I have a father. There are others . . . And I know this

won’t be enough. Not for Videric. Majesty, he sent men to Italy to kill

me – I don’t know any
fewer
of his secrets now than I did then! If I go through some ceremony of reconciliation, then in a few months, or a few

years, Lord Videric will come after me, and kill me. And he’ll kill or

disgrace or otherwise destroy all of us who know what did happen at

Carthage. He’ll kill Onorata. He’ll kill Captain-General Honorius.’

I did not mention to my King that Rekhmire’ and Ramiro Carrasco,

Attila and Tottola, and all of Honorius’s household guard, would be

Videric’s targets too. I don’t deceive myself that they’re of high enough

rank for him to care as more than a point of principle.

I held Rodrigo’s gaze. ‘Taking up his place as your First Minister

won’t make Lord Videric safe again, Majesty. Not in his eyes—’

‘Wait.’ Rodrigo held up his scarred hand.

The bushy dark brows came down in a frown.

‘While I grant that panic might, in the past, have forced Videric into

errors – I know the man! He’s worked beside me for twenty-five years. If

his King commands him to treat you with all respect and civility, then he

will do it. There can be no doubt of that.’

I looked at Rodrigo’s expression of certainty.

And one day, one day there’ll be bandits, or thieves, or robbers on the

road, or pirates who swoop down on a ship, and leave no one they find

alive or recognisable.

But this man is Videric’s friend. And quite naturally, he won’t believe

that.

Rodrigo Sanguerra gave me a curt nod.

‘Ilario. I’ll call on you again tomorrow.’

259

8

Honorius and Sergeant Orazi were deep in discussion when I arrived at

their chambers, debating how the Chin ship’s rocket-arbalests and

pottery grenadoes might be used in an Iberian army, should Zheng He

ever be persuaded to part with any, or part with the plans for them.

‘Which I doubt,’ Honorius concluded rapidly, a broad grin spreading

over his face. He reached out for Onorata with prison-pale hands.

Orazi and Saverico and even Berenguer allowed themselves to be

brought to admit the child had grown bigger, and more active; and

Honorius’s men-at-arms exchanged grins over his head as he put her on

a wolf-skin rug at his feet.

My child cooed and laughed, and thwacked her grandfather’s toes

with her fists.

‘She’ll be a quick one when she’s grown,’ Honorius observed. He gave

Ramiro Carrasco a thoughtful stare, and directed Berenguer to take the

man into the kitchens and feed him.

‘Then,’ the Lion of Castile added, ‘you might feel inclined to tell me

what has you worse concerned than yesterday?’

‘God preserve me from mercenary commanders with a keen nose!’ I

could make little amusement sound in my voice.

Orazi took himself to the door, to engage the King’s guards in

conversation; Saverico appeared no older than fourteen as he sat down

on the wolf-skin to prevent a wide-eyed Onorata eating two bone dice

and a chess-man; and I detailed the actions of King Rodrigo to my

father.

It took me while the sun rose a finger’s width up the morning sky. I

turned my head fifty times in the hour expecting Rekhmire’ to walk in

through the door.

‘ . . . And the King says he will come to me again. Until I agree,

evidently.’

Expectant, I tensed for Honorius’s bellowing rage.

Honorius presented me with his lean profile as he gazed towards the

window. He rubbed a hand through cropped hair in which the sun

showed more grey than when we had stood in Venice.

In a level tone, he said, ‘I see why King Rodrigo suggests this.’

I sat perfectly still.

I wish I might ask Rekhmire’ his opinion of this.

260

I wish Rekhmire’ were not absent from Taraco now with the last

word between us an angry one.

‘If you were Videric,’ I demanded. ‘If you went through with this
farce

for public consumption, would you leave Ilario, and Honorius, and

Rekhmire’, and Onorata, alive afterwards?’

‘I’d think it would look suspicious for those people to
die
, son-

daughter.’

‘So perhaps he’d wait a while—’

Honorius bent over and picked Onorata up from the wolf-skin. She

bubbled happily, and pulled at the laces on Honorius’s doublet with all

ten fingers splayed. He hoisted her, with a grin, as if he tested her weight.

‘She’s thriving.’ The grin became a beam. Honorius stood and tucked

her into the crook of his arm, tickled with a forefinger, and was rewarded

with a gurgle.

‘There might not be war here yet,’ he added quietly, continuing to

smile down at her. ‘But Carthage will most certainly send in legions and

a governor this year, if nothing happens to prevent it. The fourteenth

Utica and the sixth Leptis Parva, with Hanno Anagastes or the current

head of House Barbas, would be my guess.’

That he could put names and legionary insignia to these fears didn’t

surprise me, but added to the knot in my stomach.

‘Under guise of protecting us against the Franks, you understand.’

Honorius looked quickly away from Onorata, as if some other memory

had filled his mind. He walked to the window. ‘You don’t want to see

what happens in Aragon and Leon and Castile happening here.’

The window-ledge might be several feet wide, but I was relieved he

did not sit Onorata down on it, there being no bars. I leaned my elbows

on cool stone and stared down.

‘You think I ought to do this.’

‘Because I can think of nothing else!’

The diminishing perspective looking directly down the castle’s wall

made me dizzy. I resolved to draw it some day, and lifted my head. Just

visible over the castle’s outer walls, grassy slopes lay speckled yellow like

lizards under the heat. All Taraco’s white houses and colonnades were

busy with men and traffic, before they would become deserted under the

noon sun. Ochre earth and lapis-blue haze in the distance . . .

‘You think I should lie and beg Videric’s pardon in public!’

‘If you or the Egyptian have a better idea, I’ll hear it!’

Onorata began to grizzle.

I shushed her, gently, and Honorius jiggled her a very little, giving her

one of the gloves from his belt to chew on. She gummed enthusiastically

and wetly at the fingers of it.

‘Revolting child,’ my father observed besottedly.

I caught Carrasco’s voice in the kitchens, evidently in conversation

with Berenguer.

261

‘Ask Videric’s assassin,’ I said. ‘He’s under threat, and his family too.

He’d drown men like kittens in a bucket if it kept his mother and father

and brothers safe and
I
know
how
he
feels!
’

With considerable asperity, Honorius snapped, ‘I am fifty years old: I

have fought in all the major fields of the last thirty years of the Crusades;

I can take care of myself!’

‘And Onorata? Can she?’

I let Onorata grip my thumb. She smiled at me, or I thought she did.

Honorius made a sound I couldn’t identify, and when I looked at him,

he merely hitched her in his arms again, and carried her back to the rug,

and set her down on it.

He sounded exasperated, even in a whisper.

‘We need Videric back as the King’s minister! This is what we came

here for! We came here to have that bastard Videric owe us his job.’

He didn’t take his eyes from the baby, even as he growled at me.

‘I won’t tell you to risk Onorata, you know that! But this is a dangerous

world, there are thieves and pirates out there who
aren’t
Videric’s hired killers. We need to be prepared to protect her in any case. As for me . . .

Ilario, I won’t allow you to make an excuse out of me.’