Ilario, the Stone Golem (56 page)

This
is
supposed
to
humble
, I thought.
But
how
can
it
do
anything
except
make
a
man
proud?

Being at the centre of all this attention, as the sinner is.

Polyphonic voices echoed out from the great heights of the cathedral

roof; like bells, organs, great waterfalls of sound. The reverberations

struck me under the breastbone. I trembled. If I had had to walk, I might

have fallen down. But I was directed to crawl.

276

Five thousand people lined the road to the cathedral doors. I could see

through the great arched opening that the cathedral was full. Keeping

myself conscious of lines of legs, lines of bodies, tonal mass of heads, I might reduce all to their component parts, I need not see them as men

and women of the court, who know, or know of, the King’s hermaphro-

dite Ilario.

The mosaic floor was hard under my hands and knees. One drum,

tapped by a royal page walking behind me, kept to a rhythm. I crawled

under the shadow of the great receding arches of the door, passing from

under the gazes of the stone saints in their round-arched niches.

Not out of sight of the crowds. Their voices rumbled behind me, loud

enough for me to hear even over the thunder of the choirs.

Scent is the most familiar thing, and sound next. The great horns

blazing out anthems, echoing down the long aisles of the cathedral – how

many times have I stood at the back, near this door, watching the King in

procession to the altar? How many times have I smelled the flowers and

dust on these ancient tiles: stags, bulls, boar, star maps, ships, all shaped

out of tiny squares of coloured stone?

The wind whisked dust through the open door behind me and I

pressed my chin down, staring at the floor, and praying that my shirt

wouldn’t blow up over my arse.

Bad enough to be crawling up the centre aisle, under the eye of every

man.

Bad enough to know the women are up above, behind pierced stone

screens, staring down with their hands over their mouths, frantic with

enjoyment of the scandal.

For a second I pictured this from their perspective: looking down the

great open space of the ochre-walled cathedral, all the spaces between

the striped red pillars crowded elbow-to-elbow with Rodrigo Sanguerra’s

courtiers. Lines of priests in their green robes keeping the centre aisle

clear. And there, on that wide empty paving, the lone small figure on

hands and knees, creeping slowly, so slowly, forward . . .

All I could see were priests’ sandals and the hems of green robes

embroidered with gold oak leaves. I didn’t lift my head to look higher. It

cannot possibly be further to the lectern and the altar—

A hand touched my hair.

‘Here,’ Bishop Heldefredus’s voice said above me, and his fingers

pushed me to the side.

Light fell down in green and blue and scarlet and gold, patching the

floor, drowning out the colours of the mosaic. The great Briar Cross

stood in front of the coloured glass window, all the red glass centred

about it, so the light fell over the altar like the Unspilled Blood of

Christus Imperator, and the birth-blood of His Mother.

I didn’t look higher than the bare feet of the Emperor tied to the Tree.

I couldn’t lift my head; I shook.

277

‘We are brought here to witness reconciliation,’ Heldefredus’s voice

called out, above my bowed head. ‘Which is a holy state, belonging to

God, and we will first pray for God’s guidance.’

The antiphonal response thundered back.

My eyes were running; I blinked furiously to be able to see. The

bishop’s hand pressed down on my shoulder.
Yes,
I
remember
—

The stone floor between the altar and the lectern felt bare and cold, no

different from when Bishop Heldefredus had led me here this morning to

instruct me. Except that then the cathedral had been empty, open doors

letting in slanting sunlight, and silence, and the smell of the sea. Not

packed with sweating men, all in court clothes, all with their eyes on me.

I stood up on legs like water, saw my knees had bled onto the hem of

my shirt, and stumbled two steps. I fell on the stone floor and pitched

forward, caught myself on my hands, and lowered myself down, my

arms before me as the bishop had directed.

Prostration is moral and mental, as well as physical, but it is also

practical. Laying face down while Heldefredus mounted the lectern and

began to preach over my prone body, I could lean my forehead against

the muscles of my arms, and ease a little of the pain from the cold floor.

The shirt they’d given me was long enough to be decent, if I stayed still.

But it was thin. I felt every line of the mosaic, every shiver of the cold marble and basalt.

I shut the congregation out of my thoughts. Telling myself: This is

only the cathedral I have attended since the age of fifteen: there is no one

here to watch me—

Quieter than the preaching bishop could hear, one of the royal guards

standing over me murmured, ‘Bet his cock’s cold down there.’

The answer from his companion came in the tone of a man being self-

congratulatorily clever. ‘Bet her tits are!’

I knew if I looked up, I wouldn’t see anything but impassive

expressions. By the voices, these are men whom I have known by name,

to speak to when we passed in palace corridors . . .

Heldefredus stopped speaking.

As the second bishop, Ermanaric, climbed up to the lectern, I followed

my instructions and pushed myself up and back, so that I was on my

knees.

Aldra Pirro Videric met my gaze.

The packed faces in the body of the church vanished.

I turned my head swiftly away from him. Looking up—

I caught a movement. A dark silhouette, behind the fragile fretwork of

stone that hides the women’s congregation from the sight of the men.

My mother, Rosamunda.

Without seeing her face, without seeing the colour of her gown,

without more than the hint of an outline – I know her.

For a heart’s beat I was back in Carthage, on the great dock below the

278

Bursa-hill, under the brown twilight of the Penitence. Following

Rekhmire’ onto a ship. Looking back past Honorius and his then-

unknown household guard as they embarked with us. Hoping that, even

then – even though I knew she had gone back to Taraco in disgrace

weeks ago – even then she might still come after me to make her apology.

No, not an apology, I thought, peering up at the stone screen with my

neck aching. Sadder than that. If she had only come to take me into her

arms, I would have imagined the apology without her needing to speak it.

And
imagination
would
have
been
all
it
would
be.

‘Ilario!’

Heldefredus’s whisper brought my head jerking back down.

Aldra Videric stared at me, his face impassive. Knowing him, I could

see in his eyes that my turning to Rosamunda first had angered him

almost to the point of losing that perfect control.

The stiff embroidered robes of the archbishop swept between me and

my stepfather. I found myself staring at viridian silk, fine white lawn, and

the ends of a stole crusted with gold thread and embroidered with Eagle,

Boar, Oak-leaf, and
gladius
hispaniensis
. Because this was an archbishop, the sword blade was sewn in silver thread.

A sweaty hand lay heavily on my head and I heard the blessing ring

out.

‘Penitent,’ he added, removing the hand. With an effort I looked up at

Archbishop Cunigast. Thought of sermons slept through in short winter

days when the King has coal-braziers brought into his chapel in this

cathedral, and it is necessary to break the ice on the holy water in the font.

The heated June afternoon swept back over me. I blinked, hardly able

to hold Cunigast’s gaze.

‘Penitent, do you truly desire to make restitution?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ My voice broke from alto to baritone and back. I heard

a flutter of amusement behind me.

Scarlet, I kept my gaze fixed on the folds of the archbishop’s robes.

Folds in cloth: an elementary difficulty for the novice painter.

‘You will be prepared,’ Cunigast said, and stepped away in a swirl of

bullion thread and silk.

In the order of service it read
Prepare
him
or
Prepare
her
. Neither fitted me.

Two priests in plain green robes stepped smartly up beside me; one

pulled my hair up and snipped briskly away at it with scissors; the other

lathered soap and warm water in a silver bowl, and followed his brother,

shaving away the trimmed hair. I shut my eyes as soapy water trickled

down my forehead, soaking the front of my shirt.

A cloth dabbed across my closed eyes.

‘Thank you.’ I acknowledged the priest, forgetting I wasn’t to speak,

and he bobbed his head awkwardly, eyes wide.

279

If he’s a day over sixteen, I’m Videric’s natural son!

Eyes clear of soap, I had no excuse not to look in the direction of the

altar while a third bishop, whom I didn’t know, blessed me, and flicked

consecrated water over me.

Am
I
blessed
or
exorcised?
I wondered, and gave up to focus on Videric.

He seems – no different.

I suppose I had expected him to look older, or tired. Or more

impressive, perhaps. Either less frightening than the Videric of my mind

who had sent Ramiro Carrasco and others to kill me, or else more so.

No
. . .

Four chairs had been set up below the altar, on the widest step. Black

polished oak, with pointed Gothic arches cut into the woodwork, and

finials crowning their high backs. The seats were boxes; the sides

fretwork open enough to make a pattern by showing the coloured robes

of each man. The King, Rodrigo Sanguerra, with the gold Roman laurels

of one of the Ancient Kingdoms winding around his brow. The

archbishop, in forest green and silver. One chair empty –
Aldro

Rosamunda
will
not
be
permitted
to
sit
down
here
in
the
main
body
of
the
church
next
to
her
husband,
even
today.

And, in the chair nearest me, Videric.

A burly, fair-haired man, blue eyes half closed against the light

pouring down from the highest ogee windows. His legs were encased in

mirror-bright steel: sabatons on his feet, greaves and chausses covering

shin and thigh. Over that, a striped blue and white livery coat covered all

of his breastplate; all of his armour but his gorget and haut-pieces; and above that he was bare-headed. He wore Rodrigo Sanguerra’s badge on

the breast of his livery coat over his heart, and he had had himself shaven

and his beard clipped down to a fine gold shadow. Nobleman; knight; a

man entirely fitted to be first minister to a king.

His chin rested on his hand. His eyes were fixed on me.

My skin crawled. I felt worse than naked.

I rubbed my palm nervously over my scalp, feeling the tufts of hair the

boy priests had missed. One single layer of cloth kept my body from the

prurient interest of the court behind me. Videric . . .

Looks
clear
through
me.

One of the bishops began to repeat the Penitential Psalms, his voice

echoing confidently through the vast spaces of the church.

I allowed myself one glance back into the body of the cathedral, as if I

looked up at the lectern above me and eased an ache in my neck.

No man that I could take to be a tall shaven-headed Egyptian.

Is he here? Would Honorius try to reassure me with a lie?

As if I put my hand back onto hot metal, I looked in the direction that I

was supposed to. At the chairs. At my King and the churchman

Cunigast. The empty chair . . . If I look at that, I thought, perhaps I need

not look at Videric until the end; until I have to.

280

I must look.

Aldro Pirro Videric, eyes still slitted against the light, continued to rest