Read Ilario, the Stone Golem Online
Authors: Mary Gentle
Ilario, the Stone Golem
I LARIO:
THE STONE
GOLEM
A Story of the First History
Mary Gentle
Contents
1
79
199
359
What came before . . .
Ilario: The Lion’s Eye
The first story of the first history, in which we met Ilario: painter,
scholar, hermaphrodite . . . and unsuspecting catalyst of destinies.
Ilario has served King Rodrigo as the King’s Freak, but while
surviving the ways of the court, Ilario has yet another lesson to learn:
abandonment and betrayal. For Rosamunda, Ilario’s birth mother,
has arrived—and the secret of Ilario’s shameful birth must be kept
hidden.
Fleeing a murder attempt, Ilario crosses the sea to Carthage,
where the Penitence shrouds the sky in darkness. There, a fateful
encounter with the scholar-spy Rekhmire’ spawns an adventure that
will span continents, from Iberia to Carthage to Venice and beyond,
from art to treachery, love to loss, from tenuous alliances to deadly
machinations.
And when last we left, Ilario was in childbirth, hidden away in the
winding backstreets of Venice. But even there danger and intrigue
stalk the would-be painter . . .
10
1
Ramiro
Carrasco
has
not
seen
me
as
a
man!
It was the only thought in my head.
I couldn’t breathe. His hands pressed cloth and a bulk of goose-down
feathers into my mouth and nose. My vision blacked into sparkles.
My chest hurt as I tried and failed to pull in air.
It
can
happen
just
this
easily!
– because people are busy for a few minutes looking at the baby, because these curtains are drawn—
‘Ilario’s heart stopped.’ Even Physician Baris¸ will say so. The labour of
having the baby. Too much for a hermaphrodite body. Even Rekhmire’
will believe it. The midwife will confirm it. Ramiro Carrasco has nothing
to do now but wait until my face is blue and then scream out an alarm
that I’m not breathing—
And Ramiro Carrasco has never seen me dressed as a man.
The pillow blinded me towards the left field of my vision, but left a
sliver of my right eye clear. Carrasco stared down at me, his expression
curiously desperate as he bore down with his full weight.
I had time to think
Shouldn’t
I
be
the
desperate
one?
and ceased to claw at the pillow, and at his rock-hard muscles.
I let my arm fall out loosely to the side, over the edge of the bed.
Hard ceramic clipped the tips of my fingers.
My heart thudded hard enough to take the remaining air out of my
lungs. My ribs ached with trying to breathe. And— Yes, this is where I
saw one of the servants set down a water-jug. A brown-glazed pint jug,
with a narrow neck, and two moulded loops for lifting.
My head throbbed under the pressure of his hands. I slid my fingers
through the glazed loops at the jug’s neck, gripped tightly, and locked my
elbow. The weight pulling on tendon and muscle told me it was still
completely full.
Lifting pottery and the weight of water together, barely able to see
where I aimed past the pillow and his arm, I brought the jug round in a
hard arc. And crashed it into the side of Ramiro Carrasco’s head.
With all the muscular strength of an arm that, while it isn’t male, isn’t
female either.
Pottery smashed. Water sprayed.
Pressure lifted up off my face.
3
For a moment I couldn’t see – couldn’t claw the pillow away from my
nose and mouth—
A noise sounded to the side of me. A tremendous crash.
‘
Ilario!
’
Clear air hissed into my lungs.
Rekhmire’ stood looking down, pillow in his hand; there were the
backs of four or five men behind him, low down, on the floor—
Kneeling
on
someone on the floor.
‘Ilario!’ A knee landed beside me on the other side of the bed;
Honorius’s lean and chilly hand felt roughly at my neck. Feeling for my
heartbeat.
‘I’m alive!’ I gasped. Pain ached through my entire body. I hitched
myself up on my elbows and gazed down past Rekhmire’, at where Orazi
and Viscardo and Saverico were kneeling on, and punching at, the
slumped figure of Ramiro Carrasco de Luis.
‘Don’t kill him,’ I added weakly. ‘
I
want to.’
Honorius gave out with a deep-bellied laugh, and ruffled my sweat-
soaked hair. ‘That’s my son-daughter!’
‘What—?’ Federico stepped forward from the thunderstruck family
group, boggling down at Carrasco. His shock looked genuine. ‘
What
did
he . . . He can’t have tried— There
must
be some mistake—!’
The door banged opened hard enough to bruise the wood panelling,
Neferet and her midwife and priest piled into the room, together with
those others of Honorius’s men within earshot. Tottola and his brother
between them completely blocked the doorway.
I felt tension infuse Honorius, through his hand on my scalp.
He looked across, caught Orazi’s eye, nodded at Aldra Federico, and
then at the door. ‘Get them
out
of here!’
Federico blustered, Sunilda burst into tears, Reinalda threw her arms
around her sister and led her out through the door. Valdamerca, tall
enough to look Orazi in the eye, made a fist and punched at the
sergeant’s mail-covered chest as he and the two German men-at-arms
bodily shoved all of my foster family out of the room.
The slamming two-inch-thick oak cut off Valdamerca’s virulent
complaints and protestations of innocence.
Still coughing and choking, I got out, ‘I don’t suppose they
did
know
he’d do that!’
‘They don’t matter.’ Honorius spoke with enough habitual authority
that I didn’t for the moment desire to question him. He beckoned with
his free hand. ‘Physician. Come and see to this! I want Ilario
thoroughly
checked.’
Rekhmire’ stood back as Baris¸ bent over me.
I reached out one hand to the Egyptian, and one to Honorius on the
other side, and squeezed both hard. ‘The son of a bitch tried to
kill
me!’
4
Rekhmire’’s severe face was grey, under the ruddy tone of his skin.
‘We should not have let him lull us.’
Honorius turned back from confirming with the Turkish physician
that, yes, I might have bruises, and yes, I had been constricted as to air,
but in fact there was – as I wanted to shout –
nothing
wrong
with
me!
‘Nothing that eighteen hours of labour doesn’t put into the shade . . . ’
I may have muttered that aloud.
Honorius pulled his hand-and-a-half sword half out of its scabbard,
the noise muffled by the loud room. ‘Finally. Finally, we don’t have to
worry about Carrasco any longer!’
Neferet, the Venetian midwife, Physician Baris¸, and Father Azadanes
all raised their voices, crowding around Honorius, impeding his sword-
arm.
He ignored them, looking only at me.
I stared down off the edge of the bed, at Ramiro Carrasco de Luis
sprawled supine on the floorboards.
Unconscious, by the trickle of blood staining his chin. Or perhaps he’d
just bitten himself while mailed fists were punching him.
His face was bruised, bloody; his lashes fluttered a little and were still. I
saw the pulse beating in his throat.
‘You can’t kill him while he’s unconscious.’ It was not a rational
objection, but I could come up with no greater argument. My hands
shook.
Trying to keep control of my voice, I added, ‘Denounce him to the
Council of Ten. Let them arrest him!’
For all I could see Neferet’s face a strained grey, my bitterness spilled
out:
‘Put Carrasco in a Venetian dungeon! Let my noble stepfather Videric
explain to Venice why his spy is in prison! Or let my damn foster father
explain why his
secretary
just tried to kill his fosterchild!’
Rekhmire’ had not let go of my hand; he must feel how I trembled. His
own hand was not completely steady. The Egyptian looked down at me
with a warm expression.
‘That’s my Ilario! Yes. Let’s use this to cause as much trouble for the
Aldra Videric as we can, shall we? And Aldra Federico, of course.
Complaints, lawsuits, public gossip . . . ’
By the time I rolled my head over on the bolster to look up at him,
Honorius was reluctantly nodding. He shoved his sword into his red
leather scabbard with the ease that only comes from long use.
‘It’s not a bad idea. But, Ilario, if you’re hurt . . . If you just
want
me to do this . . . He’s a dead man. I have enough influence here that I won’t
need to answer for it.’
Despite the storm of protests from the Venetians and the Alexandrine,
I thought he was probably correct. Apart from anything else, the retired
Captain-General of Castile and Leon is a friend of the successful
5
mercenary general Carmagnola, whom the Venetian Council currently
employs and won’t wish upset.
Years in Rodrigo’s court can teach many things.
I have a clear picture in my mind, in the hopes of later making a
painting of it. Ramiro Carrasco’s face as he held the stifling pillow over
me. And his absolute and strange desperation.