Authors: Mary Gentle

Ilario, the Stone Golem (6 page)

She stepped forward, reached out, took my hand, and closed her other

hand over my knuckles. ‘I need you to go to the Doge’s palace tomorrow,

and plead for his life.’

‘
Me?
’

Neferet made an impatient sound. In the doorway, Rekhmire’ and

Honorius fell silent. My father’s mouth was a white line. The Egyptian

had his arms crossed firmly across his chest.

‘You.’ Neferet looked down the inch or two of height she had on me,

into my face. ‘You have to go to them, and plead your belly.’

If I stared as incoherently as I felt, it was no wonder she began to speak

in slow, plain words, as if to a village idiot.

‘Tell them this is
Leon’s
child.’ She jerked her chin toward the cradle,

never taking her eyes off my face. ‘Tell them he visited Tommaso Cassai

in Rome. And seduced you, while he was there. You followed him here,

pretending to be a widow. It’s
why
you’re here. You need a father for your child. You need them to commute the sentence from execution. It

doesn’t matter to what. Anything, so long as he lives! We can aid him

later. But you have to go there and do this for him; it’s the thing that
I
can’t
do
.’

Rekhmire’ came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

She didn’t let go of my hand.

I could see the man under her disguise – or the false pale body that

held her female
ka
, as she would say. She stood with a kind of exhausted,

humiliated dignity, gazing down at me.

If I didn’t much like her, still, pain for her wrenched through my belly.

‘Of course I will.’

‘I won’t have you put yourself into danger!’

Honorius and I spoke at the same time.

Rekhmire’’s great hand tightened on the shoulder of Neferet’s long

Alexandrine robe. His grave dark gaze met mine.

‘You can take your father’s armed escort,’ Rekhmire’ said. ‘No man

would think the less of you, not after you were attacked by a madman.’

The last few words let me know what story had been given out about

Ramiro Carrasco’s attempt to murder me.

Honorius glared. ‘I don’t like it! The boy Leon – nice enough boy –

wouldn’t have him in a company of mine, and the world doesn’t need

more lawyers – but I’m not risking my son-daughter for him!’

His protectiveness made me smile. It’s frightening, because I’m not

used to it, and what one learns to value, it may pain one to lose. But it still made me warm.

Freeing my hands, I bent over the cradle and picked up Onorata. She

had grown, but she was still smaller than any new-born should be. I slid

my finger over her palm, and she made an infinitesimally tiny sound and

closed her small perfect fingers on me.

‘I haven’t taken her out of the house,’ I said.

Honorius erupted into a fine amount of oratory, Rekhmire’ speculated

about what Alexandrine physicians might advise, and Neferet said

nothing at all. She continued to look at me.

I have seen the expression before, on slaves’ faces, before they break

down and beg.

Hurriedly, I said, ‘We’ll take the midwife. And . . . your Father

Azadanes?’ Who, privately, I thought would be of more use to Neferet as

a friend than to me as a Green priest. ‘And the wet-nurse. And the

soldiers.’

My father gave me a furious look.

Knowing him, I knew that Neferet’s distress had already lost him the

argument he would still have with me.

I looked from Honorius to Rekhmire’ – the Egyptian’s expression

heavy with thoughts I shared – and then at Neferet. ‘You do know how

small a chance this is, don’t you?’

The Alexandrine eunuch dressed as a woman gave me that inclination

of the head that, outside of Frankish lands, passes as a bow.

‘I know,’ Neferet said. ‘Nonetheless.’

The great medieval palace of the Doges was in the process of being

demolished – rather, demolished and re-built – so I spent my time

leading us between scaffolding-covered walls, and treading close enough

to the heels of the Doge’s soldier that I wouldn’t lose him as he led us inside. Every so often I looked inside the fold of my cloak to find Onorata

still breathing.

No love connected us, but I would wake two or three times in the

night, convinced she had died as she slept, and must crawl to the foot of

my bed and look at her in her chest-cot, and feel her breath against my

finger, before I could go back to sleep.

The Council guards escorted us into the main chamber of the Doge.

They
will
see
through
me
.

The thought echoed through my head clearly enough to down out the

ringing footsteps on the flagstones, and the echoes that came back from

the Gothic vaults. I had no time to look at the ducal splendour of

Foscari’s half-rebuilt palace, in the new Classical style. I could only think

I
will
join
Leon
Battista
Alberti
in
prison!

I thought sardonically that I ought to have been barefoot, with my skirt

hems worn to frays, and the baby in my arms wrapped in faded linen.

That would make them believe the poor seduced woman come to get

justice from her ravisher . . .

Looking up, past the semi-circle of white-faced old men under

Phrygian caps, all identical to me in this state of fear, I caught Leon

Battista’s eye where he stood between four armed guards.

His eyes bugged out of his head.

‘He’ll give it away!’ I muttered.

Honorius gave me the same look he gave disobedient young recruits.

‘Steady.’

On my other side – and I was beginning to wonder when they had

constituted themselves my bookends – Rekhmire’ leaned on his crutch

and suggested, ‘Will you take the baby?’

Honorius spoke across me. ‘Not for a moment. Let them see us.’

I might not be a grubby-faced ex-whore with snow on my feet and a

baby in my arms, I reflected, wondering if I could paint that in any way

that these rich fat men would believe.

What they must see in front of them in this dark and torch-lit hall was

a young woman in silks and satins, clearly of good family, her father in

knight’s armour, her Egyptian scribe at her elbow, her armed escort

clattering across the stone floor behind us, and the nursemaid with the

child two formal paces to my rear.

Like
it
or
not,
this
stands
more
of
a
chance
of
presenting
them
a
picture
they’ll
buy.

‘This is my daughter—’ Honorius stuttered over the word, in a way I’d

never heard him stutter over ‘son-daughter’. ‘—Ilaria. I demand

compensation for her! I demand justice!’

All of the ten men at the council table looked at Honorius, except for

the middle-aged man with alert brown eyes who took in my appearance

in an instant, and slightly lifted a brow.

‘Messer Captain-General Honorius.’ It was the keen-eyed man who

spoke: I realised this must be Foscari. ‘We have read the evidence you

put before us. What claim have you on this man’s estate, except the

testimony of this woman?’

Onorata was wrapped up with swaddling bands, very loosely, for the

look of the thing. Being fed, I had every hope she’d sleep and look sweet.

With her arranged in the crook of my arm, I stepped forward and waited

until Honorius finished repeating verbally what he had dictated to any

number of the Doge’s secretaries.

‘Lords, seigniors, illustrious
Duca
.’ I let my Iberian accent come out, and caught Leon Battista’s eye as I looked up as modestly as I could. ‘If

the late Tommaso Cassai, artist in Rome, could speak to you, he would

tell you about the truth of this—’

Yes:
he’d
tell
you
I’m
lying
in
my
teeth!

‘—If you wish, I will swear an oath that Messer Alberti promised me

marriage before he seduced me, and I therefore considered us

betrothed—’

I
said
I
would
swear
it.
Not
that
it
would
be
true.

Because I will swear myself black in the face if it helps. And if court life teaches you anything, it is how to lie with the greatest innocence.

‘—I don’t beg you not to punish him, illustrious sirs. Only to have

mercy on my child. Who needs her father!’

And
that
may
be
true
–
or
she
may
already
be
overburdened
with
a
mother-father.

The man to Foscari’s right said, ‘We could order some settlement

made out of the prisoner’s estate?’

Honorius’s hand closed around my elbow and gently pulled me back –

but I had no chance of breaking his grip. He glanced down as he let me

go, and stroked a fingertip over the baby’s fine fluffy hair where it

protruded from under her linen cap. I saw Doge Foscari register his

smile.

That’s
useful:
he
sees
that
the
baby’s
grandfather
is
willing
to
acknowledge
her
—

My thoughts were interrupted by a burst of deep-throated laughter

from the councillor on the Doge’s left hand:

‘That is poetic!’

He was overweight, with the high colour fat men in middle age get. I

stared at him, not knowing whether to wish him dead of a heart spasm on

the spot. Foscari lifted his eyebrow again, as if he wished to seem slightly

disconcerted; the other men on the council followed his lead by

frowning.

‘Poetic justice, perhaps.’ Doge Foscari linked his fingers together on

the polished dark table. The cabochon-cut rings he wore reflected in the

shine, in dark incarnations of their colours: emerald, ruby, sapphire. I

wondered which, if any, was the ring with which the Doge of The Most

Serene Republic weds the sea every Easter-tide. The council put their

heads together again and I couldn’t hear anything they said.

Rekhmire’ touched my shoulder, and Saverico took the baby out of my

arm, returning her to another wet-nurse brought for the look of the thing.

I dabbed at a damp spot on the silk brocade bodice Neferet had loaned

me, and saw my fingertips shaking.

Not
the
time
to
be
holding
a
child
. Nightmare visions of her fragility assailed me, and I blinked them away, staring across the room at Leon

Battista. At this distance I could see little enough – only that he seemed

well-dressed, grubby, pale with his time in prison; but had evidently been

kept in locked apartments, rather than down below us in the dungeons.

That will not stop them hanging him now, if they decide to.

We would look like a normal aristocrat family gathered in this justice

hall. Even an Alexandrine secretary would not be so unusual. I wondered

how many of the councillors were looking and wondering where the

other representative of Alexandria was this morning.
Do
they
know
she’s
his
lover?
Do
they
know
‘she’
should
be
here
in
place
of
me?