Ilario, the Stone Golem (69 page)

enough to say, ‘If I were in your position, I’d be trying to make an ally of

both
of us – Videric, me. But I don’t know if you’re too stupid to think of

that, or if you just hate me too much.’

She narrowed her eyes, so that the smudge of kohl at the corner of one

bled out into the incipient wrinkles there. ‘All your fault!’

‘You’re mistaken,’ Videric said gently.

Her face shifted; showed ingratiation and confusion.

He went on: ‘You think I have the power here today, and you can

sacrifice Ilario to that. But the truth is,
I
have no choice either. I did all I could in coming up with an alternative that Rodrigo preferred to your

quiet and immediate execution.’

Rosamunda’s eyes and mouth rounded.

She seemed to fall into herself, staring around the hall as if she

searched out any way she could run.

‘I doubt that’s wholly correct.’ I didn’t trust myself to do more than sit,

my hands shook so hard. ‘If King Rodrigo knows she can be used to get

at you, and knows that without you the legions sail for Taraco . . . He’d

have killed Aldro Rosamunda long before now. Except for one thing.’

Videric cocked his head invitingly. Odd, how I had always wished to

have him take what I said seriously.
Beware
what
you
wish
for
.

‘It’s truly hard to make a death look like an accident if it isn’t,’ I said.

‘That only happens in bards’ tales. And if anybody kills Rosamunda

under those circumstances, you’d
know
the King was responsible. And I

don’t think you two could work together after that, not like you have

done. So he loses you anyway.’

338

I shook my head, trailing fingers in the cold green endlessly disturbed

water.

‘As usual, you’ve got things so that you can do exactly as you want.

Except . . . that I don’t see how you can have what you want. Even if you hide – her – away as well as you can, someone would follow you to her,

eventually.’

‘I must personally congratulate Queen Ty-ameny, the next time I go

on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople.’ Videric’s smile was wry, and

genuine. ‘You appear to have had a considerable education in the last

twelve months.’

‘Some of it in things I never wanted to know.’

It was not something I imagined saying to this man, my father, my

stepfather. I saw how he looked at me when he turned. He may even

have been a little impressed. I wished I were still the Ilario who could appreciate that.

I said, ‘Even if you formally put her aside, nullify the marriage to a

barren wife, no one would believe it. Not after you gave up your position

at court for her.’

The position second only to the King’s.

Not
death,
not
divorce
.
.
.
what?

Rosamunda, her chin lifting defiantly, snapped, ‘I am
not
barren!

Remember the cathedral, lord husband? It may be a monster of a child,

but I conceived and bore Ilario! And never anything from you, monster

or not!’

She
must
see
how
she’s
affecting
him
—

I stopped breathing for a second, and caught it again in a rush.

Is it possible she’s behaving this way, angering him, so that he doesn’t

feel so guilty over what it is he has to do? Is she sparing him anguish?

I looked at the lines that anger was starting to pinch permanently into

the corners of her mouth. Nothing visible except anger, resentment –

and the resentment seemed to be that all this should happen to
her
.

Hope
dies
last.

She snorted under her breath. ‘If it’s your doting that’s the problem,

then . . . I made you love me, Videric. I could make you stop loving me.’

Her sneering grated on me. If I could have got words out at that

moment, they would have been,
I
am
ashamed
to
be
your
son-daughter!

Christ the Emperor knows, Videric is a bad enough man, but

Rosamunda came close to making me pity him.

‘Let me show myself at the Court of Ladies here tomorrow and take a

lover,’ she said coolly. ‘Two or three, perhaps. Gossip will get around

quickly enough. Carthage is ruled by
men
. They won’t believe you could

love me and let me fornicate with soldiers and stable-hands.’

She took my breath away.

More, I thought: ‘soldiers and stable-hands’ fell too easily off her

tongue.

339

If she hasn’t already practised what she advises, she certainly has her

eye on particular men she’d like to seduce.

Videric stood with the arc of the fountains behind him, utterly

motionless. In ten years I’d never seen him at a loss for words. He stared

at Rosamunda in a dazed way, as if he looked into a bright light, and

didn’t speak.

My hatred for Videric is almost impersonal. What he’d tried to do to

me, he would have done to anyone in my position; it didn’t matter to him

that I was Ilario.

It made it just that much easier to throw a rope to him, as I would have

thrown a rope to a drowning enemy.

‘That wouldn’t succeed,’ I said quietly. ‘Rosamunda,
look
at him. I

know he’s a courtier. But no one is going to believe he’s unaffected if you

take a lover. Do you really think even he can hide that?’

Over Videric’s mumbled protest, Rosamunda repeated with casual

cruelty, ‘I can make him stop loving me.’

‘No.’ Videric’s burly shoulders were back, and his usually bland face

tightened from the emotion in him. ‘No. You didn’t make me love you.

You won’t make me stop. If it were possible for me to stop . . . I would

have done so by now.’

No sound but Videric’s sandals on the marble floor as he began to

pace again; Rosamunda utterly silent as her head turned back and forth,

following him.

‘Then tell me how you can make me safe.’

I heard the echo of other demands in that one. Thirty years since he

married his child-bride of fifteen; thirty years of
Videric,
make
it
right
for
me
, and him finding his satisfaction in pleasing this woman.

I should have thrown the portrait in the sea before I let Videric look at

it. That, or only showed it to Rosamunda, so she’d know I understood

her game. But no, I have to be so damn
clever
. . .

Videric’s pale gaze met mine as if he could follow every thought and

feeling in me.

Fifty years of experience.
He
may
as
well
read
minds!
What’s
the
difference?
How did I ever imagine I was going to out-plan someone who’s been at court longer than I’ve been alive?

‘I’m not putting Rosamunda aside.’ Videric spoke to me, but his gaze

continued to slide sideways to her. ‘The reverse, in fact. What will

happen is that Rosamunda is going to apply to me, formally, to end the

carnal part of our marriage—’

A choked sound from her bore no resemblance to a word.

‘—and permit her to retire to a place of religious contemplation. To a

nunnery, or a convent. So that she can purify her soul for the next world,

and glorify the Emperor-Messiah with prayer.’

Rosamunda stood, her fists clenched before her straining against her

bands. ‘
How
long?
’

340

It is not unusual for widows, or wives who are known not to be able to

bear their husband’s rapes and beatings, to apply to the King for

permission to retire to a convent. Whether it’s an order of educated

women, writing scrolls of theology, or whether it requires digging turnips

to feed the other sisters and novices, evidently it seems preferable to what

they can expect of life in the world.

I asked Rodrigo Sanguerra myself, once; when I was worse than

desperate to escape the humiliations of being Court Fool. He made a

public theological debate of it, with bishops arguing whether I could be

allowed to join a monastery – where I would contaminate the men with

the parts of me that were sinful woman – or a nunnery. It collapsed in

riot when one of the male courtiers offered the opinion that I would be

far too popular in a convent as a nun with a prick.

These days the thought makes me smile, if with an edge. Trust a man

to think I would be popular for what so many of those women are

escaping from.

‘How
long
?’ Rosamunda’s voice echoed back from the marble walls,

over the noise of the fountains.

Videric spoke as if he talked only to me. ‘The Aldro Rosamunda will

stay at several different convents, to flush out and elude pursuit. These

will all be nunneries used to taking court ladies. The civilised establish-

ments where the Mother Superior is often a rich noblewoman in her own

right, and music and literature is practised as well as the worship and

glorification of God.’

I found myself nodding as if entranced.

‘Truthfully,’ Videric said, ‘I expect the agents of Carthage to have

found and investigated every rich convent of that nature within three

months of the announcement being made. Before Yule, certainly. There

aren’t more than twenty establishments that a woman of Rosamunda’s

rank would find appropriate.’

The water splashed in my palm where I intercepted a fountain-jet. If it

smelled of metal pipes, it was nonetheless ice-cold. I dabbed it on my

forehead, feeling it run down inside my tunic, over my small breasts, as it

dried in my body’s heat.

‘However.’ Videric’s spine stiffened, seemingly without his volition.

He didn’t look in Rosamunda’s direction. ‘There are hundreds, perhaps

thousands, of
ordinary
religious households in Taraco and Aragon and Granada. Small convents, closed to the world; poor nunneries that rely

on local charity and the land to support ten or twenty praying Brides of

Christ the Emperor. And a woman takes a new name when she enters

religious life as a novice. Who’s to know one “Sister Maria Regina” in a

thousand convents where there are hundreds of Maria Reginas every

year?’

Rosamunda repeated in the numb way that Brides tell their Green

beads: ‘How. Long?’

341

‘They’ll search Taraconensis, and Aragon,’ Videric observed, ‘and

likely the smaller kingdoms if they get desperate. But no matter how hard

the King-Caliph drives them . . . ’

He blinked, as if he saw something far off.

‘ . . . For all their Crusades, the Franks haven’t yet taken the Northern

Islands from us. Jersey, Guernsey, Sark; they all have thriving Iberian

populations and fishing ports. If you look at the royal maps, you’ll see

them clearly marked as part of the kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre.’

He paused.

‘What you
won’t
see, because they’re too small, are the other islands of

the archipelago. Some are mere rocks.’

Videric finally turned his head to look at Rosamunda.

‘Midway between Sark and Guernsey, with twelve leagues of sea

between them and the mainland, lies Herm. Herm is a mile and a half

long, half a mile wide. It has a fort on it, and a small fishing village, and

enough grass to graze milch-cows . . . And a stone’s throw away from

Herm, across a channel of sea, is the island of Jethou. Jethou is perhaps a

third of a mile long; a little less across. It has grass, a few trees. It’s no more than a rock. But on Jethou – there is a convent-house. It is a silent

order.’

342

18

I couldn’t have interpreted the look in Videric’s eyes to save my own life,

never mind Rosamunda’s.

He said, ‘In all honesty, I think Carthage will assume you’re dead long

before they think to send agents to a sea-swept and forgotten nunnery on

the island of Jethou.’

You’ll
give
out
publicly
that’s
she
dead
, I understood.

Rosamunda’s blank expression told me she hadn’t thought that far.

But it would be an obvious next step.

I could paint her at work in the meagre fields, picking stones out of

furrows with her bare hands; her nails broken, her skin cracked. Can