Authors: Mary Gentle

Ilario, the Stone Golem (47 page)

‘Could you lend me money, Aldra?’ I persisted.

Safrac de Aguilar sighed, his face giving it the force of extreme misery.

‘Just go inside!’

An arrow-slit window opened into the antechamber, spilling bright

sunlight onto terracotta tiles. De Aguilar nodded to the guards in royal

livery, beckoning them aside and speaking in an undertone. I caught a

glimpse of the sea through the narrow slit, far out on the horizon, and

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wondered,
If
I
had
my
babe
in
my
arms,
would
I
be
more
likely
to
move
a
prison
governor
to
sympathy
?

Sharp knocking brought me back to myself. De Aguilar was just

lowering his hand from the nail-sprinkled oak door of the inner rooms.

The door opened. A young and curly-haired man put his head out.

I stared. ‘
Saverico?
’

Safrac de Aguilar said something that did not penetrate the shock of

seeing Ensign Saverico in clean green doublet and red hose, with a

pewter lion badge sewn to his sleeve.

‘Donna Ilario!’ He grinned. ‘I have your dress, still!’

The door was pushed further open from the inside: a shorter and

skinnier man demanded, ‘What is it
this
time?’, and I recognised his voice before I saw his face – Honorius’s Armenian sergeant, Orazi.

The door opened into a wide, well-furnished chamber. On the far side

of the room, opposite the door, a window showed the sky to the north.

Beneath the window stood a table. The chair on its left had been pushed

back – by either Saverico or Orazi, when they came to open the door.

A chess-board stood on the table itself, and in the right-hand chair,

Licinus Honorius,
il
leone
di
Castiglia
, lifted his chin from his hand and contemplation of the board, and called without looking towards the door:

‘By my calculation, Sergeant, you now owe me Carthage, Alexandria,

and a year’s dye-trade in Bruges . . . Would you rather play me at

dice?’

Orazi
carries
a
sword
at
his
side.

The sergeant stepped quickly back across the room, fast enough that I

saw why Honorius might keep him as a bodyguard, and moved a bishop.

‘Check!’ He finished with a jerk of his chin towards us at the door.

Honorius looked. His eyes met mine.

I felt it in a blow to my stomach.

It was as if it took an age for him to rise from the chair.

Safrac de Aguilar murmured something behind me, stepping back

with the royal guards; I was dimly aware that the solid oak door closed

with them outside.

Honorius opened his mouth, and said nothing.

His cheeks were not sunken in or unshaven, his tunic looked clean; he

carried a dagger scabbarded at his right hip.

‘
I
thought
you
were
in
some
rat-infested
piss-hole!
’

Words ripped out of my throat with the force of a winter storm.

‘The King told me you were in
prison
! You’re all right!
Why
didn’t
you
tell
me?
’

Honorius stepped forward, his expression shifting from shock to

wonder and solemnity.

I could do nothing but stare.

‘Ilario . . . ’

Honorius broke into a great wide grin, covered the remaining distance

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in a moment, and threw his arms about me hard enough that I felt my

ribs crunch.

‘Ilario!’

‘
Oof!
’ It would have been more than a whisper, if I could have got the

breath. And had I not been embracing him equally hard.

Without letting go, Honorius briefly turned his head. ‘Saverico, get

another goblet out! And the good wine. Tell Berenguer to put the kettle

on the fire!’

He stepped back, hands gripping my shoulders, looking me up and

down.

‘Berenguer won’t let me eat prison food,’ he added absently, with a

nod towards a door I had not noted; this was not one room, but a set of

chambers, evidently. ‘You’re looking well. Have you eaten?’

‘Have
I
eaten?’

‘There’s some beef left from last night, and chicken. And maybe a bit

of mutton—’

‘
Honorius!
’

I swore in Italian, Alexandrine Latin, and a little of the vocabulary of

Chin.

Honorius beamed at me.

‘
Mutton?
But you’re in prison!’ I protested.

My father put his fists on his hips and grinned. ‘Yes, I am, aren’t I?’

There was a long oak settle beside this room’s hearth, a length of red

velvet thrown over the back to prevent draughts. I collapsed down onto

the wooden seat. ‘I don’t understand!’

Honorius signalled, without looking, and sat down on the settle beside

me. A moment or two later another man-at-arms – I recognised

Berenguer’s angular features – entered wearing an apron over his

doublet, and carrying a tray with wine and bread and cold mutton. He

gave me a nod of greeting.

I looked around at the soldiers, as well as my father. ‘You could walk

right out of here!
Why
are you here?’

Honorius leaned his elbow on the back of the low settle. His hand,

holding his wine goblet, just visibly shook. His face glowed, looking at

me.

I tried again. ‘
Why are
you in prison?
’

‘Because I want to be.’

One should not regard one’s own father as if he were stark mad.

Except under this kind of provocation. ‘Father—’

‘Because it’s necessary.’ Honorius smiled. ‘I may be a soldier, but I do

understand
some
things about politics. I’m on display.’

Saverico and Orazi both nodded at that. Honorius waved a hand to

dismiss them from their attentive stances – which meant they retired to

the chess table five feet away, to watch us from there.

‘On display,’ Honorius repeated, ‘and contrite. An object lesson. Soon

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to be impoverished. Well – comparatively, and for a while. Then all will

be well between me and the King—’

‘But you’re in prison!’ I couldn’t conquer the enormity of it, even if the

rats and dung were absent. ‘You’ve vanished; Rodrigo could have you

quietly killed! Why—’

‘To keep the stupid from rebelling against their King.’ Honorius

rubbed his chin. ‘Who, come to think of it, is
my
King. I don’t like serving under a weak king.’

I saw the truth of it as if someone had flung shutters open to sunlight. I

tried not to sound accusatory – and failed. ‘Honorius, you
agreed
to this!’

‘It’s necessary,’ he said simply.

Orazi, at the window table, prodded his bishop and grinned.

Words choked themselves in my throat. I put my goblet down before I

should spill it.

‘And you
didn’t
let
me
know
!’

Honorius cocked a brow.

He said nothing of the distance of Constantinople, or the likelihood

that I would have been somewhere else by the time letters or messengers

arrived. Which saved my pride, if nothing else.

‘I wasn’t certain this would happen until I got here.’ He shrugged.

‘One of the possibilities was execution, but you tell me your Rodrigo

Sanguerra’s a reasonable king, so that didn’t seem likely. This didn’t

surprise me when he ordered it.’

He paused, putting his hand on my shoulder again as if reassuring

himself of my solidity.

‘Letters can be intercepted. What could I safely say to you?’

‘I had the same difficulty in Alexandria . . . ’ I watched Orazi passing

the castle-piece back and forth between his fingers.

Honorius’s grip tightened. ‘Why are you here and not in Alexandria?

What happened? And how did you get here?’

‘Ah.’ I craned my chin up to see what was beyond the window, but I

had been correct before: it was the mountains and the north. No visible

sea. ‘Have you heard any gossip about a “devil-ship”?’

Honorius’s lips pursed surprisingly delicately; he might have been a

disapproving duenna in the Court of Ladies. ‘I think you’d better

explain.’

I explained.

He sat for a minute or more, after I had done.

Quietly, he asked, ‘Is Onorata still with us?’

Relief and chagrin hit me in equal measures.
I
should
have
told
him
that
at
once!

‘Oh, she is – in
loud
health.’

Awkward although it might be on the hard wooden seat, I leaned over

and embraced my father again.

236

The lines around his eyes tightened as if he looked into sunlight. ‘I

didn’t realise you’d miss my company, Ilario.’

Since it seemed appropriate to a soldier, and since I might otherwise

weep, I said, ‘Fucking idiot!’

He wrapped his arm about my shoulder and shook me, as if I were a

much younger boy.

It left me sitting forward on the settle; I ran my fingers through my

hair, and lifted my head to look into his face. ‘If you agreed to prison . . .

How long do you stay here?’

‘Long enough, I suppose. I dare say I’ll hear from the King.’

A frown dented his brows.

‘Ilario – I sent no word for you to come home! Whether on a “devil

ship” or not! What are you doing here? It can’t be safe—’

I summarised it as briskly as I might.

‘King Rodrigo will call Aldra Videric back as First Minister,’ I

concluded, ‘now that Admiral Zheng He’s ship is here causing panic.

Then Videric’s back in power, and we need not—’

‘Wait, wait.’ Honorius sliced the edge of his hand through the air.

‘How is this one single ship to cause enough danger to Taraco that the

King can justify that? If it had been a
fleet
, now . . . What use are a few

hundred men?’

It was a reasonable supposition, given the crews of galleys. A man can

hear ‘giant ship’ without any real conception at the reality of the matter.

‘Five thousand men,’ I corrected.

‘Five –
thousand
.’

I had brought no sketchbook, there being no way of doing that. I

called to Berenguer to rescue me a charred stick from the edge of the

hearth-fire and, under all their eyes, sketched on the wooden table the

lines of a Venetian galley, and the size, beside it, of Zheng He’s war-junk.

‘Bugger me!’ Honorius said.

I left him staring at it and ate the remainder of the mutton, suddenly

very hungry; and chewed on fresh bread while Honorius and Orazi had a

long and technical argument about the probable effectiveness of a ship

with a crew of five thousand men.

After that, Honorius picked scraps off my plate, and kept breaking off

from his own words to look at me. I did not know whether to feel

embarrassed, or valued, or both.

‘ . . . sent the rest of my men on with orders to my steward, at the

estates,’ he finished, licking grease and crumbs off his fingers. ‘Get the damn place back in order now the King’s promised to withdraw his

garrison. I kept young Saverico because he’s supposedly intelligent.’

The Ensign grinned.

‘And at any rate, young and quick enough to get up and down these

stairs when he’s ordered. And Berenguer because he cooks. And

Sergeant Orazi stayed because I needed a man who could hold a

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conversation and play chess, or I knew I was like to run mad in the first

week. Doing nothing doesn’t come easily to me.’

‘I can believe that . . . ’

Judging by Venice, I thought Orazi’s idea of intelligent conversation

was likely to be,
Do
you
remember
when
we
got
all
of
the
foot-reserve
into
the
battle-line
that
time
in
Navarra?
, but my father is a military man.