by Mary Gentle
been having babies since the world was made. You can manage as well as
the others, can’t you?’
I raised my voice.
‘Father, you didn’t call me a whore for having got Onorata. I suppose
I’m the only one here who can lay down as a man, and then get up with a
child in my belly.’
That stopped the shouting.
What am I doing defending Rosamunda?
I saw how it defused something of the tension between them. There
were still lines of force in the hall of the fountains, where desperate looks
pinned people together: Honorius staring at Rosamunda, Rosamunda
pressing her bound hands against Videric’s thigh, Rekhmire’ crossing the
tiled floor and putting his hand on my shoulder.
His flesh was warm, heavy; and at once greeting and warning.
‘I never thought I’d see my mother and father together in the same
room,’ I said.
Rosamunda stirred, a swathe of black hair coiled across her forehead
and cheek where it fell down from her crown of braids. Her eyes flicked
quickly from side to side. ‘Saints and Sacred Beasts! I was right. You have only to stand in the same room together, you two. My lord—’
The sudden appeal, turning her head and looking up at Videric,
brought home to me as nothing else could that these two have worked
together to plot their rise at court.
That for all the people see Videric as necessary to Rodrigo Sanguerra,
Rosamunda has performed Christ knows how much of the unattributed
work and support. And now we’re sending her away.
Rekhmire’ was my best choice. I touched his arm, drawing his
attention. His skin was hot and a little sweaty. I said, ‘Find me a way that
she doesn’t have to go into exile.’
All three of them looked at me: Honorius, Videric, and my mother.
Honorius with the long-suffering bad temper that he evidently only just
controlled, not leaping in to say, She birthed you, but that’s all; you owe her nothing! Rosamunda with the same puzzled bad temper with which she’d
regarded me in Hanno Anagastes’ court.
Only Videric worried me. What he hid under that bland exterior was
enough experience to guess more than I could about my impulse not to
let my sometime-mother be imprisoned on Jethou.
‘Why am I to find an answer?’ Rekhmire’ sounded disgruntled, as well
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as still out of breath. ‘If you’re saying what I think, it seems a perfectly reasonable solution. It’s not as if an innocent woman is being condemned
to captivity.’
Rosamunda interrupted without appearing to notice that the Egyptian
spoke. Her eyes were fixed on Honorius. ‘You married, didn’t you?’
I caught Videric’s stifled surprise. I wondered if he was thinking what I
was: I didn’t know she’d kept track of Licinus Honorius . . .
‘Who told you that?’ Honorius sounded more interested than
annoyed.
‘After you came back and started to renovate the estate. There was a
lot of gossip in the women’s court. One of my friends has a cousin who
was married to – well, it doesn’t matter. But with the property, and their
suspicion that you must have brought money back from Castile with
you, there were enough of them with available daughters that they
needed to know.’
She blinked, as if what took place in the women’s court had happened
centuries ago, although it couldn’t have been more than twelve months.
‘Licinus, what did she die of?’
It sounded odd to me to hear him called that. Shifting uncomfortably
on the hard floor, I thought, Why did he never invite me to call him by his personal name? Or did he think I was more comfortable with ‘Honorius’?
Honorius spoke with the reserve I associated with the man. You would
not have known he and Rosamunda had been lovers – but then, I
doubted they had, in more than the carnal sense.
‘Her name was Ximena. You’ve obviously heard,’ he added. ‘She died
bearing our second child. Our first had died before it could be baptised.
This one . . . ’
‘Took her with it,’ Rosamunda completed. She lifted her tied wrists,
smoothing her hair out of her pale face with the backs of her hands.
‘That would have been me. If I’d left with you. They say you had
another wife before this Ximena. Did you kill her too?’
As dryly as a desert wind, Licinus Honorius observed, ‘You are well informed. I used to know better than to underestimate the Ladies’ Tower
in any castle . . . No, Sandrine died of low-land sickness. She never
carried a child long enough for it to distress her when it passed.’
Rosamunda’s expression held a great deal of doubt on that point; I
supposed mine might, also. And, to my surprise, Rekhmire’ looked as if
he would have spoken, under other circumstances.
‘Ilario is my only living son or daughter.’ Honorius raised a brow, still
with his gaze on Rosamunda. ‘In fact, both son and daughter—’
‘And like all men, you wanted an heir. A true son.’ Rosamunda looked
dissatisfied.
‘Not all men,’ I said. ‘And you of all people should know that! Since
you’re standing between two men who prove different to that.’
Rosamunda sighed.
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For the first time, she looked at me without dislike; only with a tired
melancholy that made me truly believe her a handful of years past forty.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t help. Two of you . . . It means
nothing, not when everybody else is different. Ilario, don’t let them do this to me.’
I caught Rekhmire’’s glance. With an acknowledging look to my father
and my stepfather, I touched Rekhmire’’s arm, and drew him closer to
the fountain, where the noise of the falling water would obscure what we
said if we spoke quietly.
‘It’s what every man wants,’ he said. ‘Your enemy, dependent on your
actions. Ilario . . . don’t let it prove too intoxicating. And remember how
very much people dislike being done a good turn.’
‘I remember helping you with your knee,’ I said acidly. ‘You still owe
me for my patience, book-buyer.’
Rekhmire’ grinned at me.
I stopped smiling. ‘Be honest with me. What is it I’m not seeing? And
– is there any alternative, for her? It must have happened before; she
can’t be the only wife any man has ever been vulnerable through.’
‘My lord Videric moves in the same circles as royalty, now, since he’s
as necessary to Taraconensis as people think he is. We’re not discussing
a minor nobleman and Carthage wheedling out occasional secrets. If she
can be adequately threatened, the Fourteenth Augusta and Third Leptis
Parva sail for Gades, and come marching up the Via Augusta to Taraco.
The King-Caliph’s talking of a reconquista, now; of taking Iberia back into the Carthaginian Empire . . . Taraconensis wouldn’t be their ideal
foothold, but it would give Carthage a land-border with the Franks.
Somewhere to mass their legions, before they send them against Europe.
King-Caliph Ammianus and Hanno Anagastes will take advantage of
anything to get them through that gate. They won’t kill Aldro
Rosam
unda – she’s too valuable as blackmail – but they will take her and
hurt her, if they can find her. And then set her free to come back to Aldra
Videric, with the knowledge that they’ll maim her worse the next time.
It’s easier to think of someone dying than it is to think of caring for them
when they come home with their eyes gouged out, or half their skin
flayed away . . . ’
The shimmering cold water of the fountain was all that held me from
vomiting. Cold, clear, clean. The sick sweat left my forehead after a
while. I rested the palms of my hands against the cold marble.
‘And we can’t guard her?’
‘You should know the answer to that, Ilario.’
Any guard that’s strong enough to keep her safe is strong enough to
make a prisoner out of her. And even if she were in Rodrigo Sanguerra’s
deepest dungeon, a servant or a slave would know where she was, and
could be bribed into telling. Often for what would seem like a
ridiculously small sum, if you’re not the slave or servant.
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Faith is a better barrier. Faith will keep Sister Maria Regina shut off
from the mundane world, in communities where bribery means nothing.
Because anyone who will live willingly on Jethou doesn’t want anything
the world can offer.
I stepped away from the arch.
Videric bent, cut her bands, and half-lifted his wife to her feet, urging
her forward.
Rosamunda looked over her shoulder at me, on her way to the door.
‘You don’t understand.’ She spoke quietly, frowning; I felt for the first
time that she was straining to make me understand, rather than justify
herself. She said, ‘If no one buys you – if you’re a slave and you’re
manumitted – then you’re free.’
I was confused. ‘Well, yes.’
She smiled. It was sad. ‘Odd, that you should have given birth to a
child, and still think like a man. Ilario, you’re not legally a woman. Your
father can’t marry you to a man against your will and desires.’ She
glanced at Honorius. ‘For a good match, or because he thinks it would be
better for you. And if you take a man as a lover, he can’t legally put you
aside for not having babies as and when he wants them. I know you have
none of the legal protections of being a man. You were made a slave as
soon as that Valdamerca woman took you off the chapel steps. But if
you’d been all girl, you would have been a slave as soon as you left my womb. Do you understand that?’
‘Not truly.’ I couldn’t do anything else but be honest. ‘Legally, I
suppose I’m not a woman.’
‘No,’ Videric said. ‘According to the Kingdom’s best lawyers, you are,
in fact, a eunuch.’
‘ What—’ I began.
‘I know.’ Videric cut me off. ‘It’s the nearest definition they do have.
Ilario . . . I know you don’t wish to hear advice from me. I can’t say I blame you. But the last thing you want is any legal taint of womanhood
about you – trust me, Ilario.’
The look I gave him must have pierced even his hide. He appeared to
wince. Or perhaps it was indigestion.
‘It would alter your relationship with your father.’ His nod at Honorius
was civil, if not warm. His gaze travelled to Rekhmire’. ‘And your
husband, should you marry a man. That knowledge that you have
absolute legal power over your wife . . . it follows you everywhere, do you
understand me? Everywhere. If she can’t say no, her yes is worth very
little.’
Caught between sympathy and distaste – for both of them – I
countered Videric with a stare very like his own. ‘I understand you. All I
need do is imagine being a slave whom no man can free.’
‘Precisely.’ He nodded agreement, as if unaware of any ironies.
Rekhmire’ demanded coldly, ‘Why were you making such inquiries?’
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Videric inclined his head to me.
‘You’re not female.’ He smiled. ‘I had the lawyers look into it . . . If I
could have you declared female, you would – as my publicly acknow-
ledged child – belong to me.’
Before I could get a word out, Honorius cut in, in a tone like a
stonemason sawing marble. ‘Ilario is of my begetting, and would belong
to me.’
Rekhmire’, as urbanely as ever, put one monumental hand up. ‘My
claim pre-dates the court of Taraco – I bought and owned Ilario; Ilario
would therefore be mine.’
The only true woman in the room, Rosamunda, looked up and caught
my eye. ‘I gave birth to you, but there’s no way you’d belong to me!’
‘Christus and St Gaius and Kek and Keket . . . !’ I shook my head,
even if it did make me feel cold inside. I eyed Videric warily. ‘When you
say I would belong to you—’
‘Your money or property would be mine, if Master Honorius or any
other client—’ He stressed the word. ‘—paid for a painting. It would go
into my treasury; you couldn’t touch it. You would need my permission
to travel, if you wished to study under another master. I could order you
in what you wear, where you go, what you eat or drink, who you may
speak to.’ He shrugged. ‘And beat you if you disobeyed, despite your
being past the age of majority. It’s arguable that, as a woman, the male
age of majority wouldn’t apply to you.’
The silence was one in which I could hear my heartbeat in my ears,
deafening me.
Videric gave another shrug. ‘But they seem to feel that a membrum
virile, however small, qualifies you as a male. There’s also the rumour that you fathered a child – that bastard that Carrasco acts as nursemaid
to. I believe that carried weight with the justices.’
Fathered a child.
I didn’t blink.
My mother looked at me. At Rekhmire’. Back at me.
She smiled sadly.
‘There are men who don’t want the law to apply. But that really
doesn’t matter, does it? It’s the ones who do want it that matter, and then
it’s there for them, in all their dusty old scrolls, and there’s no fighting it.
Of the girls I went to school with, all but five are dead now. And ten of
them died in childbed. The men are on their third wives.’
She studied me with finality.
‘I suppose that it doesn’t matter if you have the breasts to give suck,
and the womb to carry a child – you have a penis. And no matter how
small it may be, it may not make you a man, but it makes you not a woman.’
‘Sadly, that avenue is closed to us.’ Videric took Rosamunda’s arm.
‘And it remains to see what we may do, now.’
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20
Rosamunda looked down intently at his hand, not moving forward as
directed.
She spread the fingers of both her tethered hands, directing a
searching glance at the skin there. Some thought tugged at the corner of
her mouth. I could not tell what she felt.
‘When I was a girl . . .’ She made fists of her hands, regarding them as
if their acts entirely surprised her. ‘. . . I used to keep a knife and cut my
skin.’
She turned her head without raising it, and the light caug
ht the surface
of her eyes, obliterating iris and pupil, glimmering white in the sun. She
was looking at me.
‘I always wanted to cut my face,’ Rosamunda said plainly. ‘Ever since
a man put my hand on his belly when I was twelve, and showed me how
it made his male organ stand up. But I saw that plain and ugly women
had worse marriages, and worse lives. I thought I’d grow up to marry a
rich man, and then take lovers as it pleased me.’
She made a kind of snort, as if of amusement, but there was something
wrong in the note of it. ‘Then I did take a lover, and I found out what happened when a man’s potent. The birth nearly killed me. The pain . . .
And I came so close to child-bed fever. I could have died at the age of twenty. There is a reason I never left with your father, Ilario, although it’s
not the one he thinks. I realised that if I left and married Honorius, I could expect to conceive every year – perhaps only every two or three
years, if I put the child to my own breast. The women’s court talk about
ways to stop conceiving a child, but most of them become big-bellied all
the same. And then it’s as dangerous to be rid of it as it is to carry and
bear it. The brothers and sisters you never had, Ilario; they would have
killed me . . . ’
Her head came up: she addressed Videric without any pretence or
seduction.
‘If I’d already been married to you for five years, and it had taken
another man to get me pregnant, I thought I’d be safe with you – so I
stayed. If Ilario had been an heir, that would have been perfect. You
couldn’t have asked anything more of me. While there were no children
. . . I wanted you to love me. There was nothing else to keep you from
putting me aside. Then my father would have married me off to some
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other, much poorer, man; because he at least knows the bull is sometimes
as much at fault as the cow. A garden can’t grow if the seed is rotten.’
Videric’s face was patched carmine and a colour like spoiled milk.
Rosamunda said quietly, ‘I never did take another lover, after
Honorius, despite what the Court of Ladies may say. It isn’t difficult to
flirt and seduce and then be uncomprehending at just the right time . . .
And I had you, for the marriage bed, and I wasn’t afraid of starting a
child, and so I . . . began to enjoy it. I liked my life. It was perfect. When I saw what my child had grown up to be, I knew I could never have raised