Ilario, the Stone Golem (51 page)

shoulder of his tunic. Low and even, he murmured, ‘Would this get what

you want? Aldra Videric back in the King’s service? All of us safe?’

I had debated not telling Carrasco what Rekhmire’ had planned. Until

I thought, firstly, that he knew so much of my business, a little more

would make no difference – and, secondly, that it affects him almost as

much as it does me.

I said truthfully, ‘I don’t know. Suppose it was asked of you? Would

you do it? If it meant you were disgraced, here, at home. And there was

no changing it, after?’

The secretary-spy gave me as ironic a look as I have ever had from any

man.

‘Ilaria, mistress, I’m dirt
now
. You bought me because a court in

Venice convicted me of attempted murder. I am disgraced.’

‘And?’

‘If it saved my family?’ He looked straight into my face. ‘If it even

helped
save my family, I’d crawl over broken glass. Lie. In public; I wouldn’t care. I would do anything. You know that: that’s why you’re a

fool to trust me!’

Oddly, that made me smile. ‘But I’m the nearest thing to an ally you

and your family have, so I
may
not be as stupid as you think.’

He chuckled, the first unmediated mirth I had heard from him since

the Doge’s prisons. Unexpectedly, his voice softened.

‘I understand that this child will have to live with whatever people

think of her mother. Father.
Parent
. I understand that.’

He tucked in one edge of Onorata’s linen wrap, his finger still showing

the remnants of the callus that comes with holding a pen. Over that, it

was scarred with the casual brutality that living as a slave entails.

‘
I
would
do
anything.
’

Perhaps because I had slept so deeply that afternoon, I could not sleep

in the night.

The door of the apartments abruptly opened.

Since I was cleaning the child after her breakfast, and dirty myself

because of it, I looked up with a curse, and found myself staring at

Rekhmire’.

Not looking at me, I found.

He stared at Ramiro Carrasco de Luis, where the man had just

returned from disposing of soiled shit-rags and emptying chamber-pots.

Rekhmire’ pointed to the door he had entered by. ‘You. Out.’

‘Rekhmire’—’ I set the wriggling baby on my lap and wiped at its

hands.

‘You have a visitor, Ilario. One who requires privacy.’ The Egyptian

looked pointedly at Carrasco.

I indicated the inner door and spoke as evenly to the assassin-nurse as

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I could manage. ‘Take Onorata through and dress her. Not too warmly.

We’re taking her up to see Honorius after this.’

‘Yes, madonna.’

The Iberian didn’t look at Rekhmire’ as he walked past within a foot of

the larger man.

‘And keep your ear away from the door!’ Rekhmire’ grunted.

I stood up from the bed. ‘What in your eight hells do you think

you’re—’

‘I’m leaving the city.’ Rekhmire’ crossed to a chest I hadn’t noticed,

and began to recover small items of his own, which he threw into a bag.

‘I have an escort from the King. I’m travelling to Lord Videric’s estate, to

speak with him.’

The book-buyer had his belongings together by the time a man could

count a hundred. Half-sentences came into my mind: I couldn’t get any

of them out.

Going
to
Videric
.

‘Are you going to . . . put this suggestion to him?’

The Egyptian only glanced at me.

I wondered how Videric would be now. And Rosamunda. After six or

eight months stewing in the provinces, in the winter cold and spring

mud and summer heat. Among peasants and serfs, and whatever minor

nobility were their neighbours. If their neighbours haven’t snubbed them.

Rosamunda will have hated being away from foreign merchants, and

Rodrigo’s court entertainments. Who’s the leader of the Court of Ladies

now?

‘Rekhmire’.’

He slammed a tiny chest shut with great vehemence. ‘No matter your

decision – I must talk to the man.’

He turned around, pushed himself on his stick towards the oak inner

doors and turned the key in its lock, locking Carrasco and Onorata in.

He limped towards the outer door again.

‘I will send in your visitor.’

The door closed behind him before I could get a word out.

The room was frighteningly silent without Onorata’s noises, without

Honorius’s voice, or his soldiers’, or the Egyptian’s. Only Attila and

Tottola’s tribal dialect in the antechamber made this sound like a human

habitation.

Out of nowhere, I thought,
This
is
the
first
time
in
eight
months
or
more
that
I
won’t
be
in
Rekhmire’’s
company.

The door creaked. I realised I was studying the pattern of grain in the

floorboards, and lifted my head.

King Rodrigo Sanguerra stood just inside the closed door.

I sprang to my feet as rapidly as long-inculcated instinct could move

me, and dropped down on one knee.

The King smiled crookedly, gesturing for me to rise.

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He crossed past me to stare out of the south-facing windows; ran a

finger across the sculpted frame’s vine leaves, and picked up one of the

translucent porcelain dishes that I had brought back from Zheng He’s

ship.

There was no noise except the singing of laundry women, hundreds of

feet below, beating sheets in tubs in a courtyard exposed to the sun. My

chest hurt. I realised I was holding my breath.

‘Majesty.’ I let the breath out with a little gasp. ‘Is it safe for you to visit

us here?’

His hooded eyelids dropped down over his large eyes; I knew it for

amusement. It faded. ‘King Rodrigo Sanguerra isn’t here. But the slave

Ilario’s old owner is.’

‘I was freed again. In Rome.’ My mouth was dry. ‘I won’t do what you

ask.’

Rodrigo didn’t sit down. His habitual slow pace carried him from the

windows to the shuttered cupboards that lined the walls, and to the dais

on which the bed stood with its hangings closed, and the middle of the

bare floor.

Rodrigo Sanguerra said, ‘I owe you an apology.’

I could not have imagined this as something he would ever say.

I bit back suspicion. ‘Majesty?’

‘I won’t lie.’

He turned on his heel, looking at me with a glint in his dark eyes.

Rodrigo’s strong features took the window’s light, and I ached to draw

him.

He added, ‘I owe you an apology for owning you – or, for not freeing

you before I did. But I won’t lie: I’m more sorry that my ownership of

you has come back to bite me . . . ’

He walked to stand in front of me. You did not commonly notice, until

he was in the (admittedly rich) doublet and hose and cap of any courtier,

rather than cloak and crown of the King, that he was not a particularly

tall man. I doubted him a hand taller than I. But whatever his stature, he

contrived to give the impression of looking down at a man.

‘Ilario . . . I know an apology doesn’t matter to you—’

‘It does!’

The reply startled out of me.

I blushed.

I shook my head, as if I could clear from it the shock of seeing Rodrigo

Sanguerra here in these shabby rooms. And the wrench of all the old

affection between us. Because affection is possible between master and

slave, no matter how distorted.

I stared at Rodrigo. ‘But I still won’t do what you’re— what’s being

asked of me. I can’t. I shouldn’t. Not for my sake. Not for my daughter’s

sake.’

And not for my father’s, though I have not yet spoken to Honorius.

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Rodrigo Sanguerra slowly shook his head. His presence seemed to fill

the room. He came to the throne before I was born; there was white in

his beard now. I wondered if he had summoned the Crown Prince back,

some time between last year and now, or whether Prince Thorismund

was still in the north fighting against Franks.

‘You have recognised old friends here,’ King Rodrigo said mildly.

Familiar faces among the men on the quayside at the chandlers’ shops,

and in the long market between the docks and the palace, and in the

livery of King Rodrigo at the palace gates . . .

‘Yes, Majesty.’

He lifted a blunt-fingered hand, pointing at the window. ‘And you

know, because you must in the past have ridden over, every mile

between here and the mountains.’

‘Yes, I’ve loved this place,’ I gritted. ‘You want me to make it so that I

and Onorata can’t come back here without disgrace.’

There would be layer upon layer of thoughts beneath what he actually

said; I knew him of old. When he first bought me as a cocky fifteen-year-

old, I thought a king would have too many affairs of state to be

concerned with what his slave got up to. He sent me to the cane often

enough to disabuse me of that very quickly. A king must at least try to think of everything.

Rodrigo looked directly at me. ‘Ilario. Will you go through with

making a public apology, if Aldra Videric will consent to it?’

Consent!

I stared at Rodrigo Sanguerra. If he asks ‘will you do this for me?’, I’ll

spit in his face.

‘No. I won’t do it. And if you order me, because you’re my King – I

still won’t do it.’ I held his gaze. ‘I’m not looking for an
excuse
to give consent.’

‘No, I see that.’

Rodrigo Sanguerra moved restlessly, walking to the window again, and

turning on his heel and walking back.

‘A king is a steward of his country.’

I shrugged. ‘Slaves don’t have a country.’

Rodrigo gazed down at me without acknowledging that. ‘Steward. Not

a Dictator or Tyrant, as the ancient Greeks had it, to hold everything his

private property. Do you understand, a steward? To keep the peace?

And to leave that peace to the next generation?’

I thought of Onorata, behind the door with Ramiro Carrasco.

‘I understand.’ I bit my lip. ‘No. The answer is no. I won’t have her

grow up regarded as dirt because of what I’m supposed to have done. I

won’t lie!’

The King of Taraconensis knelt down on the bare dusty floor.

I gaped; I must have looked like a gaffed fish.

Rodrigo Sanguerra had moved stiffly getting down on his knees, and

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he knelt as if the bare boards hurt his bones. His spine was ramrod-stiff;

his chin jutted up. I could only stare.

‘I can’t give you this in public.’ His voice sounded low but not

particularly quiet. ‘Not the way you would wish it. I’m a king: I can’t

shake my people’s confidence in me that way. But I will give you all the

humiliation you wish of me, here in private. I once owned you. Ilario, I

beg you to do this thing.’

Ilario,
close
your
mouth
, I thought.

And did.

‘I beg you, on my knees. If you desire an apology for anything that

occurred while I owned you, you have only to speak. I kiss your hands

and feet and I beg you to go before the people and lie.’

Blood rose up in my face, I could feel it. When Ramiro Carrasco had

knelt, the embarrassment was painful enough. This –
Oh, this is only

impossible!

‘You can’t do this, Majesty!’

‘I came here to you to do this.’ Rodrigo’s dark eyes unwaveringly held

my gaze. ‘My life’s work is tottering. The peace will fail. Carthage will send in legions. If fighting won’t serve me, I’ll grovel at any man’s feet if

it stops that.’

‘Why don’t you put me in prison? There are still torturers here, aren’t

there? Why don’t you force me?’

‘Will you make it necessary?’

In another man it would have been an implied threat. With Rodrigo

(as I have long had cause to know), it is merely honesty.

He shook his head, as if at an afterthought, red lips quirking in his dark

beard. ‘And besides, penitence is rarely convincing and true, brought

about by those means!’

I stared down at him, starkly disbelieving. Amazed.

There is nothing you will not do to save your home, I thought.

Or to set me an example.

The room, heating in the early sun, held a mere breath of air passing