Ilario, the Stone Golem (61 page)

could rebuke him, he said, ‘Because I’m a lawyer?’

It had not occurred to me.

But
he’s
right:
a
man
trained
in
the
university
might
serve
us
well
.

‘Yes. But also,’ I added, ‘you’re a slave.’

Ramiro Carrasco rubbed his hand through his hair, dishevelling it

thoroughly. ‘Why do you need a slave, madonna? Master?’

I surveyed Onorata’s belongings again by eye. Honorius’s experiences

with a mercenary baggage train are nothing once one needs to take a

young baby out.

‘Apart from general baggage-carrying? I don’t want Marcomir to think

I’m asking for money. If I own a slave, I’m not poor.’ I shot a wry look at

Honorius. ‘Even if the money’s yours.’

‘We’re family, brat!’

It cheered me.

‘And,’ I said, ‘Marcomir might also think this is for revenge. Ramiro,

you need not tell him what you did. But if necessary, you can tell him I

forgave you a crime.’

And
Marcomir
did
nothing
to
me
that
I
didn’t
desire.

300

Ramiro Carrasco stared at the cabin floor. ‘Madonna, if you wish, I’ll

tell him I tried to kill you.’

Any man who didn’t know him would not have seen what the honesty

cost.

‘You can be the judge of whether he needs to hear that.’

Carrasco looked down at his hands. The cabin was dimly lit by oil-

lamps, but I thought his skin showed a flush. He stuttered, seeming

acutely conscious of the presence of Rekhmire’ and Honorius. ‘I don’t

know why you would forgive me!’

‘Because since we left Venice, you’ve been completely trustworthy.’

He looked startled. ‘I—That could be a ruse!’

‘There are a hundred ways a slave can get back at a master. I know.

Believe me. You didn’t try any of them.’

Carrasco ducked his head, almost flinching.

If a man ever did good by stealth, or tried to atone without any other

man actually
noticing
. . . that would be Ramiro Carrasco de Luis.

Atonement brought the cathedral and Father Felix to mind. I thought

suddenly,
I
wish
I
had
confessed
myself
sorry
over
Sulva
Paziathe!

I did worse to Sulva, and I will never find her to atone for it – when people like the Paziathe disappear, they do it effectively, because lives

depend on it.

If I can’t pay a debt where it belongs, I must pay it where I may.

Carrasco picked up the sack with Onorata’s clothes, toys, and food. As

the Alexandrine and my father put on their cloaks, he ventured,

‘Onorata’s going to be hungry when she wakes up. She wouldn’t eat,

with all the noise.’

I rested my fingers briefly against her brow, not merely to see if she

was feverish, but because her warm skin is a touch like no other. ‘I’ll feed

her when we get there; I doubt they’ll mind.’

The baby opened pale blue eyes, coughed, cooed, and loudly choked

out, ‘
Mee-roh!
’

Honorius stared at my baby.

Rekhmire’ opened his mouth, as if he would say something, and firmly

shut it again.

Carrasco and I stared at each other.

‘Did she
say
something? No,’ I corrected myself, ‘it’s too early, surely.

Surely?
What
did she say?’

Carrasco brushed the back of his fingers against her cheek.

If she was cool, I saw, he was hot as fire, his skin flushed now from

neck to hairline.

He muttered, ‘She’s said that once or twice before. I . . . think it’s what

she calls me.’

‘Calls . . . ’

Ramiro
. ’Miro.

‘The first word my baby says is
your
name
?’

301

He flinched.

In an unexpectedly peace-making tone, my father observed, ‘It might

equally have been my name. Or the sergeant’s. Or the book-buyer’s. Or

yours, Ilario.’

‘This child has too damn many fathers!’

And
not
a
mother
among
them
.

I sighed, shook my head, and hefted my child in her sling.

‘Let’s go and find another of them . . . ’

A hollow moan shuddered through the air.

Outside the immediate area of the port, Carthage’s windowless houses

and steep, narrow streets resounded to it as if they were the body of a drum.

Impossibly, the sound came from a shell – although larger than any

shell should be. Earlier, Jian had given me the spiral conch to hold in my

hands and draw.

He all but laughed himself into an apoplexy when I attempted to blow

it. All I did was go red-faced and watery-eyed, failing to get the merest

squeak or fart out of the thing.

The alien sound echoed out again under the black midday sky.

The street stood deserted.

Because every man and woman in Carthage who could reach the

docks crowded down there, I admitted. The novelty has not yet worn off.

I could see dark lines of heads silhouetted against the naphtha

illuminations of the quayside. And crowds of the King-Caliph’s subjects

stood up on their flat roofs, and tried to count the number of huge sailed

war-junks cruising in the vicinity of the city.

Zheng He quartered a number of ships further down the gulf, I

learned from Rekhmire’ and Jian. Partly for logistical reasons, and partly

because Zheng He had smiled, in a very civil manner, and set about

demonstrating Alexandria’s apparent new allies to every North African

city for fifty miles around.

Almost inaudibly under the conch’s racket, a brass horn blared to

mark the first hour of the afternoon.

That used to mark my break for a meal, here.

I shot a look at Honorius, his face made sombre in the naphtha street-

lights’ glare. Light glinted off Orazi and Berenguer’s steel sallets where

they flanked him.

The narrow streets, cut into steps more often than not, gave

Rekhmire’ the most trouble. He drove himself forward, cursing under his

breath, and I guessed his knee-joint would be inflamed tomorrow.

‘Here.’ Ramiro Carrasco pointed.

He stopped by a heavy iron door, set deep into the granite wall of a

four-storey house. The iron surface showed featureless except for one

keyhole.

302

No way to knock. No windows opening onto the street. They would

be on the inside walls, opening into a central courtyard.

‘All looks the same to me!’ Honorius grunted, squinting up at the

brown and gold aurora as if the midday Penitence sky could give him

directions.

No point in asking any Carthaginian, I reflected. In the current

excitement, Carthaginian Visigoths weren’t interested in talking to any

stranger who wasn’t a man of Chin.

Surveying the iron door, I remarked, ‘I don’t recognise it.’ I added a

swift gloss: ‘Carthage was new to me!’

I have no desire to tell my father how I stumbled up these stepped

narrow streets in Marcomir’s company, in a blind haze of arousal.

Since I had stout leather sandals on, I fetched the door a hefty kick.

It juddered in the frame.

I raised my voice in case we were overheard. ‘We can come back if

they’re out now—’

I caught the faint grate of metal against stone.

The door swung in, opening into darkness. The street’s naphtha-light

was not bright enough to show me who stood there. Between that and

the sunless day-sky of the Penitence above, I could barely make out that

it was a man who stood there.

‘Forget your key?’ His voice cut off.

The dim figure turned into a black silhouette, as a lamp shone behind

him.

Yellow light swelled and swung on the clay walls, and a silver-haired

woman walked up behind the man in the doorway. She held up the lamp,

her eyes squeezed into slits. I recognised the hawk-nose.

‘Donata!’

Now I could see the man. Lean, muscled, dark-haired, middle height.

He has left nothing of his face in Onorata.

Marcomir frowned. He might not remember me well, either, I realised.

It
was
once,
and
a
year
ago
.

And these Alexandrine robes might make him think me male or

female, according to his assumptions.

‘Marcomir?’

He stared at me, finally grunting an assent.

I took a firmer grip on Onorata, cradled in the crook of my right arm.

‘Marcomir. This is your daughter. Her name is Onorata.’

Ramiro must have mentioned armed men to him. Marcomir showed no

overt reaction to Honorius and his soldiers.

He has not changed so much, in a year. Dark hair curling only a little

lower on his neck, and his off-duty tunic cut in a different fashion.

Marcomir met my eyes, and looked away. It was normal human

embarrassment I saw on his face.

303

I said, ‘May we come in?’

He thrust his hand through his hair, looked around at each of us, and

finally back at the baby in her miniature linen shift and coif.

‘Yes . . . ’

Donata echoed him. ‘Yes, come in.’

He led us through into the inner part of the house.

Donata’s face seemed to have strain scored more deeply into her lined

skin. But that might just be this present situation.

Above us, feet thundered up and down the narrow stairs. Other

occupants, I speculated, listening to the echoing noise.

It’s still a rooming-house.

Lamp-light guided us through to the back, into the kitchen that

overlooked a central courtyard. Donata caught my gaze as she set the

lamp down on the low basalt table. It was no more than a shaped stone

block. I recognised the stove, the table crowded with Roman-style pots,

hanging onions; even the silver water ladle . . .

In the hoarse dialect that I thought was from Leptis Magna, or one of

the other Carthaginian settlements, Donata broke the silence.

‘One-Eye said you got a good master out of it.’ She nodded at Ramiro

Carrasco. ‘If you’ve got slaves of your own, I guess he was right.’

There
are
no
good
masters!

A window stood open, into the communal courtyard. The shutters

were ajar. Scents of fish and junipers and sewage came in on the early

afternoon wind. It vividly brought back to me One-Eye’s cells,

Rekhmire’’s hired house, the tophet.

I sat down on one of the long benches built into the kitchen wall.

Onorata woke and began squirming gently in my lap. ‘How did you

know One-Eye sold me?’

‘Oh, my son spoke to him, in the tavern? Afterwards? We always

wanted to know people went somewhere comfortable.’

Comfortable
.

The choice was between screaming or saying nothing. I doubted I

might truly explain to this mother and son what happened to their

guests. I still wake in dreams, cold sweat down my spine, as Rekhmire’

turns away and does not throw his purse to One-Eye.

‘My lord! Sit down, sit down!’ Donata flurried around Honorius,

ignoring his soldiers in much the same way that she ignored my slave.

She put a Samian jug full of wine on the kitchen table, along with pottery

cups that seemed remarkably crude after Jian’s porcelain.

I caught her eye.

She flushed, defiantly poured out wine, and drunk her cup down in

one.

Marcomir ignored her, sitting down on the ledge beside me. He stared

at Onorata. ‘Is this the . . . How did you – how did we— She’s tiny.’

Donata glanced over, hawk-swift and analytic.

304

‘Premature.’ She registered my surprise. ‘Seven-month baby?’

‘Yes. How do you . . . ?’

‘I saw enough of them dead at that age.’ She shrugged. ‘Never could

keep a babe in my womb long enough until Marcomir, here. And look

how that turned out!’

Her humour was rough teasing, but in any case Marcomir was

oblivious. He gently smoothed the curls of black hair that poked up from

under Onorata’s linen coif. She turned her head and appeared to stare at

him.

Rekhmire’ thumped down onto the bench, rubbing his knee. I was

vaguely aware that Honorius put his hand under Donata’s elbow,