Ilario, the Stone Golem (55 page)

271

coarse yellow linen. If you’re not truly penitent, that’s no more than a

play-actor’s costume. You can’t insult God that way.’

I read the implied
And
I
won’t
allow
it
without difficulty, knowing Father Felix as long as I have.

It
never
occurred
to
me
–
that
as
well
as
begging
pardon
of
my
stepfather
Videric,
I
might
have
to
mean
it!

I delayed directly answering. ‘Aldra Videric will be there on the last

day?’

‘Lord Videric arrived tonight. He will be in the cathedral tomorrow, as

well as on the last day.’

Did
he
have
an
Egyptian
spy
with
him!

No way to ask that question.

I drew up my knees where I sat on the thin mattress. The chill of the

earth permeated through the straw. Linking my arms around my shins, I

was at least grateful that the penitential shirt came down far enough to

cover me to the knees.

I said, ‘I very much want to ask pardon of Videric.’

Since that was true, I hoped it would sound true. Even if the reason for

it isn’t what Felix would think of as the correct one.

I shifted as my empty belly rumbled, and watched Father Felix’s

expression. ‘I have a child, Father.’

Slowly, he smiled. It altered his face beyond belief. ‘God has blessed

you, then.’

‘I’m still what I was. A man’s body and a woman’s body. Will the

church re-admit a hermaphrodite?’

I had been five or six when it occurred to me that the rags the peasants

tied on bushes at sacred wells and springs didn’t alter their lives in any perceptible way. Valdamerca kept me in the women’s section of the

church at our estate, and I paid attention after that, and concluded this

was much the same business as well-fairies and forest ghosts. The two-

year-long argument over whether I could be permitted to attend Mass

with King Rodrigo’s household, therefore, had both taken me by surprise

and completely bewildered me.

I suspected Felix knew that. He had argued fiercely for me to take

communion. If a God as kind as the one Felix believed in had existed in

this world, I would have resented the debate about my soul considerably

more.

He ignored my question. ‘Is your desire for pardon genuine?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘You have done wrong, you have caused great wrong, to the Aldra

Videric, and you humbly wish him to pardon you?’

The night felt cool, after the heat of the day, but my cheeks were hot.

Father Felix watched me blush, himself apparently unmoved.

‘You have to let me do this!’ I said.

272

‘Perjure yourself in court if you wish, Ilario, but not before God’s face.

And not before the altar in this church.’

Reaching out for his long-fingered hand, I knelt up on the straw

mattress.

‘Father, you go back and tell the bishops that this is right. If you don’t,

my family are in danger, the King is in danger, Carthage will take control

of this country, and I guarantee that we’ll be in a war with the Franks within two years. If God doesn’t want towns burned and men

slaughtered and women raped, then God will let me lay at Videric’s feet

and beg his pardon!’

Father Felix’s hand felt cool. His skin glowed a dark hue on the back,

where I could see tendons shifting under the skin. A pale gold for the

creased palm.

Slowly, he brought his other hand up to grip mine.

It had not occurred to me before I left Taraco that Father Felix stands

a head shorter than I do, and is wiry rather than strong. If I had

Honorius’s grasp of military necessity, I might put my hand around

Felix’s throat until he choked into unconsciousness, and claim the old

man had a fit.

But even Honorius knows I have no ability to do that.

‘Do you want me to lie to God, Ilario?’

‘No, just to His bishops!’

Father Felix’s lips formed a firm line.

I knew he would be thinking, with that keen mind of his; what I

couldn’t predict was how differently he might value things, having the

faith in his God that he did.

‘Rodrigo knows of this,’ he mused.

‘Yes.’

‘If His Majesty hasn’t informed the bishops, he presumably trusts in

your – quite genuine penitence – to convince them.’ Felix’s pale eyes

flickered a gaze at me, and then he resumed staring at our interlocked

hands. ‘Well . . . pride is a sin. And I shouldn’t be proud enough to think

I know better than the men of God in
concilium
. If God objects to you, Ilario, I think He’s quite capable of making that plain to them at the

appropriate time.’

He squeezed my hand and let it go, his knuckles like a bagful of jack-

stones.

‘Have you done anything you’re ashamed of while you’ve been away,

Ilario?’

‘Yes.’ My face was hot again, I found.

‘Then I suggest you use this as an opportunity to ask God to forgive

you for those things. Do you wish to confess them to me?’

The secrecy of the confessional might have been broken in the past,

but not by men such as Father Felix.

273

I knelt on the packed earth floor and let him take me through

antiphons and responses.

He gave me a searching look, as if I were both taller and older than he

had expected. ‘And what is it you’re ashamed of?’

Dutifully, I said, ‘I gave way to the lusts of the flesh, Father.’

‘And you are sorry?’

His pale gaze made me shift a little, then. I reached for a pat lie, and

could only find honesty. ‘It brought me my child. So . . . I don’t regret it.’

‘Then what is it you do feel shame over?’

Masaccio’s death. Paying money to own Ramiro Carrasco de Luis,

and enjoying the power that gave me over the man. Exulting in the talent

that made Masaccio call me in to paint the golem – although that could

not be directly mentioned. I spoke in general terms of pride.

‘And I’ve taken too much money from my – family.’ I changed the

word from
father
at the last moment. ‘I owe a debt there—’

‘Families should support each other.’ Felix looked a little puzzled, as

well he might, supposing that I must be talking about the absent Federico

and Valdamerca. ‘You would do the same for them, wouldn’t you?’

I thought of the unlikelihood of the retired Captain-General of Castile

needing support from me, and smiled. ‘Yes. Of course.’

‘The man you own as a slave: he attempted to kill you?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘And you have forgiven him.’

‘I trust him not to do it again,’ I said grimly, and caught a slight smile

on Father Felix’s face. The
perigrinati
christus
never smiled often. I must have looked puzzled.

‘Has this man atoned, in your eyes?’ Father Felix asked.

‘I . . . Yes.’ It startled me to find that true.

‘Then it was not wrong to have bought him. Although you should free

him as soon as possible. No matter what the law and the Old Testament

say, I cannot believe that owning a man is good and right.’

The situation that kept Ramiro Carrasco in his collar couldn’t be

explained, and I didn’t try. I talked to Father Felix of minor sins, finding

more comfort in his voice and presence than in anything he might be

saying. It was not until the lantern had almost burned out of oil, and he

asked me for the last time if I had sins unconfessed, that something burst

out of me:

‘Is it a sin to hate your father and mother?’

Father Felix steepled his fingers on his chest, looked me up and down,

and slowly shook his head – not answering my question, I saw, but in a

general negation.

‘The scriptures would say so.’

‘What would you say? Father Felix?’

‘I’d say I don’t have answers for you, Ilario. Much as you always

wished to believe I might. Is it wrong?’

274

I thought of Videric, my mother’s husband, whom I will have to see

tomorrow. And keep silent about so much.

I thought of Rosamunda, my mother – whose presence or absence I

haven’t asked after, because how can I bear either? The thought that she

could see me subjected to this, or the thought that she could stay away?

I looked up from the floor at Father Felix. Eyes adjusted to the almost-

dark, I could see every line of his sixty-year-old face. I desired

desperately to paint him in the style of the New Art: recognisably Felix,

perigrinati
christus
of Taraconensis.

‘It’s wrong.’ I shrugged, half desperate. ‘It’s corrosive. Like sublimates

in an alchemist’s workshop. I only feel contempt for him. I hate her so

much that it’ll burn me away.’

He didn’t ask me for names. ‘And are you guiltless towards these

people, yourself?’

This time I shook my head in confusion. ‘You know I can’t be,

Father.’

‘Spend your time in the cathedral meditating on that, then. I believe,

as I believe in God Himself, that this will be of more use to your soul than any amount of grovelling in ashes.’

Even qualified relief went through me and lightened me, as if my body

could float. I answered his small smile with one of my own.

‘I have to do the grovelling in any case. But I’ll take your advice,

Father. Will you be present?’

He looked up from preparing to give me blessing, if not absolution.

‘That’s as you prefer. My duties don’t compel me to it, but they don’t

keep me from it, either.’

‘Don’t come.’ I couldn’t make myself say anything less honest.

‘Neither day. It’ll be easier for me if I don’t have to speak knowing you’re

there – and I do have to do this.’

Father Felix nodded.

‘I think I understand why. Bless you, Ilario. Here. Take these.’

He stooped and picked up the lantern, muttering a little as the

streaming heat caught his fingers, and got it into a safe grip.

His other hand, in the dark, pushed at me half a dozen sheets of folded

blank paper, that recognisably came from the scriptorium, and two

broken ends of chalks.

Videric wasn’t there on the fourth day.

Nor Rosamunda.

Nor Rekhmire’.

275

10

Slaves are used to being on their knees in the presence of other men. But

this is different – is intended, primarily rather than secondarily, to be

humiliating.

Humbling
, I thought. Ashes are no dirtier than a woman gets cleaning

out hearths all day. I’ve worn coarser shirts working with King Rodrigo’s

horses in the royal stables. And wearing a shift that only comes down to

mid-thigh, when I know every eye in the cathedral watches me to see if

they can see a cock and balls under the hem, or women’s nipples and

breasts through the weave . . . That’s not so different from some days at

court, here.

But it
is
different.

My face burned: half of it shame, and half rage at the sheer injustice.

A decision must have been made that to keep me from my child for

five nights was cruel. Attila and Tottola brought her to the hermit’s cell

beforehand for a very few minutes, in the hour when other men would

break their fasts. She whimpered. I touched her warm skin, murmured in

her ear, and found her unharmed and well cared for.

The two soldiers had four priests with them, solemn faced, not

permitting any word to be spoken; not even a greeting and a farewell.

Tottola smiled at me. Attila looked intense.

I put my hands inside Onorata’s linen shirt and blanket to find out

why she grizzled, and encountered the hard nub of folded paper.

There was enough light when they left with her for me to puzzle out

the words – the scribe’s hand of Ramiro Carrasco. But my father

Honorius’s unmistakable irascible tone:

‘The
damn
book-buyer’s
back.
Persuaded
me
I
can’t
be
there
tomorrow.
He
says,
Chances
are,
anyway,
you’ll
have
more
parents
there
than
you
know
what
to
do
with.’