The Stone Golem Read online

  I blamed the Green priest for superstitious thoughts. Neferet’s Father Azadanes claimed the baby’s (and my) survival as his own Green Christ’s miracle. I found the argument not persuasive.

  ‘Sheer chance!’ I said, when Rekhmire’ had his prayer-box open, lighting incense to the eight gods within. ‘Chance plays far too much of a part in the world for men to be easy thinking of it.’

  Rekhmire’ finished his ceremony with a bow of his head to the Eight, and clipped the box shut again.

  ‘A man should always be polite…’ He dusted incense from the front of his tunic and trousers, and used his crutch to cross the room, putting the prayer-box away in his oak chest. ‘…Especially to minor gods. The advantage of deities who control small things is that one need never worry about why evil and pain rule so much of this world–minor gods are obviously too weak to prevent it.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t know what the excuse of Father Azadanes’ God is.’

  I was inclined to smile at that, but very wryly. ‘Heathen! Pagan. Atheist!’

  Rekhmire’ snorted. ‘Make up your mind which!’

  The tiny, warm, damp weight of the child on my chest became something I was used to, as I rested in the great bed in the Alexandrine house and regained my strength.

  When I complained that I was strong enough, Rekhmire’ invited me to move, and I discovered how badly the stitches knitting the walls of my womb could hurt.

  I steered clear of Father Azadanes’ company, weary as I was of hearing about his ‘Green miracle’, and how he attributed the baby’s survival and mine to the Green Christ. It was difficult to avoid him, since he was much with Neferet.

  Once, coming into a room more quietly than I realised, I overheard Neferet asking, ‘But can’t your God make my body mirror what my ka is?’, and I backed out as silently as I’d come. Her–his–desperation hurt me.

  The more so because of her jealousy. She watched the baby, in my arms; watched it avidly enough that, if I hadn’t had Honorius with me, I would have been half inclined to offer it to her for adoption. Certainly no one would ever get past that lioness-of-Alexandria attitude to harm the child.

  Physician Bariş, with a sombre face, came to tell me he doubted his surgery could mend a womb like mine so that it could conceive again. Especially since it had been such a remote chance I should conceive the first time.

  I felt a rush of relief, and at the same time terror, looking at the miniature sleeping face and thinking, This is the only one.

  ‘Tell you truth,’ Bariş observed dispassionately, having finished his investigation of my healing surgical wound. ‘I’m more surprised to see you live than her. Frankly, it’s a miracle you survived.’

  He looked confused when I muttered, ‘Don’t you start!’

  The baby’s small size continued to flabbergast me.

  She was barely bigger than Honorius’s hand when he caressed her in her swaddling bands. Although she didn’t wear the tight strips of cloth for long–a day or so later, Rekhmire’ muttered something about barbaric customs, and (with Bariş’s help) overrode the Venetian midwife and my father. The baby girl was allowed to lay on my bedcover, only a swathe of linen around her, in the patches of sunlight that made her dark eyes close and open as slowly as if she were under the sea.

  The stitches being painful for longer than I expected, I found myself frustrated in my desire to care for her. Neferet, unsurprisingly, took up every chance to feed or bathe her–somewhat more surprisingly, I had help from not only Honorius himself, but from Saverico and those others of the men-at-arms with younger siblings or their own children at home. Berenguer slid in and out of the room when she was a few weeks old, and left a fish carved out of ash-wood, that she might play with–or at least watch–in the shallow water of her bath.

  I wondered much if there might be something wrong with her. But I kept those thoughts to myself.

  After a few weeks, as she put on weight by the efforts of cow-and goat-milk, I found that I knew what her name ought to be, even if she still might not live to use it.

  I spoke to Honorius one midday, when the rest of the house was still at their meal.

  ‘With your permission–I would like to call her “Onorata”.’

  My father smiled and wept together, without shame.

  ‘I feel nothing like a mother,’ I said to Rekhmire’, as the Egyptian handed Onorata back to me after she burped milk over the feeding-cloth on his shoulder. ‘I can’t put her to my breast…’

  Looking up, I surprised concern on his face.

  ‘But I feel I should protect her,’ I added. ‘Perhaps I should think of myself as Onorata’s father?’

  The Egyptian’s brows dipped into a scowl. ‘If it comes to it, I would suppose you both, in that sense. But why not a mother?’

  Because I would not be Rosamunda if my life depended on it.

  The thought of that woman, in Carthage or Taraco, still sends hot sweat down my spine, half the length of the Mediterranean Sea away from her.

  Am I not supposed to understand her better, now?

  ‘I have no idea how to be a mother. Valdamerca raised me as a slave.’ I shrugged. ‘But Honorius is a good father. If Onorata lives, perhaps I can be to her what he would have been to me.’

  The Egyptian slowly nodded.

  I don’t know if Rekhmire’ mentioned the conversation to Honorius, but one day after the year’s early Easter, when I ventured downstairs, I caught the Captain-General of Castile and Leon drawing up dowry documents for his granddaughter, and another version of his will.

  He blushed and put the documents away in his portable wooden writing-desk.

  ‘I leaned to write a reasonable scribe’s hand when I didn’t have an ensign in camp who could do it for me.’ He shrugged, ostensibly casual. ‘I want you and Onorata to be wealthy when I die.’

  ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ I nodded towards his sword, where it was wrapped in the scabbard’s straps and laying on the window-chest. ‘Pass me the sword and I’ll be able to afford all the red chalk I could ever need…’

  Honorius grinned.

  ‘I’ll haunt you,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘You do anyway. I can’t get away from you. You and the bloody book-buyer!’ I raised my voice in case Rekhmire’ should be near enough to tease, but there was no response.

  And no crying baby, either. He often took her into his lap while he sorted scrolls, so I suspected the one absence answered the other.

  Honorius neatly cleaned and wrapped up his quills and wax tablets and paper, stowing them away. He crossed the room and bent over to place another piece of wood on the fire in the hearth.

  ‘I spoke through Carmagnola to Doge Foscari,’ he observed. ‘Apparently, Messer Leon Battista will come for trial, soon.’

  I had wondered why matters would drag on for so long–until I worked out that the Council of Ten would want to know how it was that so very many identical seditious news-letters could be produced within a short amount of time. And since the name of Herr Mainz wasn’t being bandied about Venezia, I guessed Leon had not yet spoken.

  A slave has always to live under the threat of torture. It is a subject I have given some thought. The idea of Leon Battista having to undergo pain like that, unprepared as he must surely be…

  Honorius put his lean hand on my shoulder. As if he read my mind in my face, he said, ‘Neferet’s seen him. She says they’re letting darkness and hunger do their work for them. Given the Alberti family’s place on the Council, even Foscari won’t use outright torture until he can make it seem there’s no other option. And by then he’ll be out of there. You like Leon Battista,’ he finished, with an odd questioning note to his voice.

  I nodded. Frankly, I said, ‘I think he’s a fool. But I don’t have a city that I care about as he cares for Florence. Perhaps I’d do the same under those circumstances. Slaves don’t have homes in that way.’

  ‘No.’ Honorius’s hand gave my shoulder a final pressure. He looked at me wit
h a smile. ‘Have you thought? Onorata is freeborn.’

  For my final examination before he departed, the Janissary doctor was visibly not certain whether to request a man or a woman as chaperone.

  Bariş seized on Rekhmire’’s muttered volunteering with gladness–likely because ‘Alexandrine eunuch bureaucrat’ trumped both in terms of respectability.

  ‘You should tell the physician if you intend to have sex again,’ Rekhmire’ mumbled towards the end of an extensive examination, translating some of the medical Greek technicalities.

  I raised both eyebrows at him.

  A dark flush turned his Egyptian colouring something closer to brick-red than I had imagined possible.

  ‘Whether you intend to fornicate…It’s not as if you’re breast-feeding, to avoid conception. I know he’s said, ah…that it’s all but impossible…but…You ought not to get pregnant again. That would be very dangerous.’

  I grinned at him. ‘You’re not my master, Rekhmire’.’

  Or a mother hen, I reflected, as he looked even more flustered.

  Evidently pulling himself together, and ignoring my minor harassment, Rekhmire’ faced the Jannissary doctor. ‘Is Ilario capable of conceiving another child?’

  I murmured, ‘Now there’s a question I never wanted to hear…’

  Bariş looked amused. Rekhmire’ failed to.

  ‘Because, you see, if Ilario is capable, then having sex as a woman could be dangerous, if not fatal.’ Rekhmire’ stuttered. ‘Ilario, will you be content to have sex as a man does?’

  ‘Uh.’ I felt my cheeks heating; knew I must be red from neck to hairline.

  ‘With–another man, that is? I suppose–of course–if you were to have sex as a man does with a woman—’ Rekhmire’ tucked his arms tightly across his chest and glared down at me. ‘Doctor, can Ilario get a woman pregnant?’

  ‘No.’ Bariş shook his head. ‘Never.’

  He glanced from Rekhmire’ to me, and back to the Egyptian.

  ‘Because I have never, in my entire professional career, seen such a scarlet shade of embarrassment–I doubt this patient will ever have sex again!’

  What concerns I might have had were, by that, and the expression on Rekhmire’’s face, exploded completely.

  I howled and clutched at my ribs.

  Rekhmire’ squirmed. ‘I hardly meant…I had no intention of…! I—’

  ‘Go away, Rekhmire’.’ I couldn’t stop grinning. ‘You’re not my master, you don’t have to force yourself to ask the doctor gynaecological questions! And Physician Bariş is right. At the moment, I’m debating between a monastery and a nunnery! Just so long as it’s a celibate order!’

  It wouldn’t have surprised me had the Egyptian cited some of the more scurrilous rumours about Frankish monasteries and nunneries. Instead, Rekhmire’ clattered his crutch against the floor and made a production of lumbering off. I wheezed with the first uninhibited laugh I’d had in months.

  Bariş eventually ended his investigations under my skirts.

  ‘You’re healing healthily and quickly. Put no stress on that part of your body; avoid heavy exertion for the moment.’ He signalled to the giant Balaban to pack up his medical chest. ‘Might I have a look at the child? If you don’t mind?’

  I lifted Onorata out of the oak-chest cot, unwinding the nominal swaddling bands that loosely swathed her. Instead of crying, she beat thin perfect arms against me, and snuggled onto my chest in wide-eyed relaxation, apparently gazing up at the Turk.

  ‘Can you tell? If she’s normal,’ I clarified.

  He ran his finger down the sole of her foot, watching her small toes curl. ‘I examined her at the birth.’

  ‘Yes, but–I don’t know what there might be on the inside.’

  Bariş’s ship’s-prow nose cast a shadow across Onorata’s body as he bent down, peering very closely.

  ‘These things are so rare. Nor do I know, to be honest. And most “hermaphrodites” are men born looking in some way like a woman, or women who have what resemble the man’s parts. Or nothing changes until they become adult, and then a woman merely coughs and testicles appear…I thought the true hermaphrodite was only a rumour. A fable.’

  I sighed as he lifted Onorata with all gentleness, and laid her back on the wooden chest’s bedding.

  I put my hands to the hem of my shift. ‘You want another look?’

  ‘May I? The last occasions have been a little fraught…’

  His voice became muffled as he bent down.

  The iron instruments were cold, making me flinch.

  In accented Alexandrine Egyptian, Bariş observed, ‘You have little more than the eunuch has, as testes go! I wish I had you for an autopsy, to find out for certain whether this lump is testes or ovary…’

  ‘Well, I’m damn glad you don’t!’

  Bariş gave me something perilously close to a grin, and gestured for me to pull my shift back down. ‘A shame I go back to Edirne now my captain has recovered. You could put it in your will that I could have your body.’

  Having pulled my shift down, I shrugged my way into the voluminous Venetian over-robe that Honorius had gifted me, and began to lace up the front of it.

  ‘Firstly, I’m not dying! And, secondly, if I do die in Venice, not only will my friend Rekhmire’ follow you to Edirne and kill you several times, each more horrible than the last…I, personally, will haunt you.’

  The Turkish doctor called for a bowl to bathe his hands. Deadpan, he remarked, ‘I begin to see the advantages in the Hippocratic Oath…’

  Having washed, he took a wax tablet and stylus from an inside pocket of his tunic, and poised the one over the other.

  ‘I may write to Ephesus and Padua with my findings,’ he remarked, small bright eyes focusing on me. ‘But I have a number of additional questions I wish you will answer, Ilario…Which only you can answer. You must know which is best–the male orgasm or the female orgasm? So, which? Or is it that you feel you only know what’s normal for a hermaphrodite, and not for a man or a woman? How is your sexual appetite? When your man-parts are spent; is it possible to function as a woman until the male refractory period passes? Have you ever dually and simultaneously—’

  Honorius walked into the room, perfunctorily rapping on the door.

  ‘Oh thank God!’

  Honorius ignored that. ‘I need to talk to you. Alone.’

  3

  ‘Alone’ meant three of us; my father sending one of his men for Rekhmire’. Four, if Onorata counted–blissfully silent, since asleep in her lidless oak chest.

  Honorius himself served mulled wine into ceramic bowls. He sat on the joint-stool by the bed, set his own wine down on the stone hearth, and scratched at his hair until it stood up in tufts, giving him the semblance of a fierce, if ruffled, owl.

  He broke the silence.

  ‘A letter has arrived. Written to me.’

  Fear stabbed under the joining of my ribs.

  I ignored Rekhmire’’s concerned frown and held out my hand. ‘Show me!’

  Silently, Honorius fished out creased papers from his sleeve, and held one out between two fingers. I took it.

  ‘From King Rodrigo Sanguerra.’

  If my sight blurred with shock, I still recognised Hunulf’s penmanship: a particular curve on the ‘d’ and ‘g’. He’s long wanted my nominal position as scribe to the Sanguerra family.

  I reached for the bowl with my other hand, welcoming the hot taste of spiced wine, and finding my fingers shaking only a little as I read.

  ‘Translated freely,’ I observed, ‘it appears to say, “Get your arse back here before I sequester your estates and put your family under attainder”—’

  Rekhmire’ snickered, caught Honorius’s glare, and glossed it: ‘You see why I employed Ilario as a scribe.’

  ‘No.’ Honorius kept a perfectly straight face for a moment. He smirked as he took the page back from me and passed it over to the Egyptian. ‘I grant you the accuracy of reading between the l
ines.’

  ‘This isn’t like the last one?’ I speculated. ‘Not a dozen copies sent out to ambassadors or bankers, so that one would get to you sooner or later? This came direct to Venezia?’

  Rekhmire’ did not even look up to see Honorius’s confirming nod.

  ‘It would appear that King Rodrigo knows where the Captain-General is…There are other channels by which information could pass, but I will point out that Aldra Federico–and Ramiro Carrasco, when he was at large–are both positioned to have told your King this. Or rather Videric, whom we may assume would tell King Rodrigo.’

  Honorius muttered, ‘Court politics! ’ in tones of deepest disgust

  I got up. It eased me to pace the room, despite the pull on my pink and healing stitches.

  ‘This makes twice King Rodrigo’s ordered you home.’ I paused, bending down to touch the fluff on Onorata’s head. ‘And as we said in Rome, it’s understandable. You retire, rich. You head home for Taraco. No man sees you. The first thing you do is leave again for Carthage—’

  ‘That was to visit you!’ Honorius looked mulish.

  ‘I know that! You know that! The King doesn’t know that!’

  Onorata began grizzling.

  Rekhmire’ leaned his crutch against the hearth-surround, and lifted Onorata out of her cot into his lap. His arm supported her head with a professional care. I did not know whether to feel pleasure or jealousy that she subsided at once into whining mutters.

  Voice soft and even, Rekhmire’ said, ‘Ilario’s correct. King Rodrigo doesn’t know. He has a foreign general come home–foreign, because twenty-five years in Navarra and Castile means no man knows you. You have the reputation of “the Lion of Castile”—’

  The Egyptian pressed on when Honorius would have interrupted:

  ‘—Whatever you think of your reputation, you have it. You return to Taraconensis, you ask your King for nothing, and you go to Carthage. Exactly when, as far as he’s concerned, Carthage has just robbed him of his First Minister!’