by L. A. Meyer
Whooosh!
Screech! I look down and there is a thin red line of blood across my middle! And, as the scythe swings to the side, I can see a smear of my blood on its edge. Oh my God! I am going to be gutted! I—
But no, that is not going to happen, not just yet. Even worse things are in store for me.
Fra Gilberto comes back into the pit and stands by my side.
“Brother Bruno, please stop the pendulum.”
Bruno grabs the lever, and the scythe comes to rest against the far wall, ready, at any moment to swing again. The former occupants of the balcony once again take their places.
Fra Gilberto leans over me and whispers, “Come now, girl, tell us. Did you see horrible, devilish things happening at Goya’s house? Did you yourself copulate with goats, did you—”
“No, no nothing like that, please, no!”
He turns aside in disgust.
“I see that you are still in the grip of the Horned One. Brother Ignacio, please bring the cleansing water.”
I feel the rack on which I am lying lean back and my feet are raised high above my head. What is going on? Cleansing water . . . What?
Brother Ignacio appears in my vision, grinning and holding a pitcher of water.
“Proceed, Brother,” says Fra Gilberto. “Let the Holy Water of the Mother Church shrive her soul.”
With that, Brother Ignacio lifts his pitcher and pours the water into my nostrils.
I buck and gag and try to rise, but I cannot. I can only choke and beg for mercy.
“Please... please... stop!”
Fra Gilberto nods again and more water is poured into my nose and a hand is put over my mouth.
Oh, Lord, I am drowning and it hurts, it hurts, I can’t stand it! Please take me! Take me now! Oh, God, please!
The hand is removed from my mouth and water streams out as I hack and cough.
I have been hurt before, but nothing like this. Mercy!
“Will you tell us now, to save your soul? If you confess, we will end your suffering.”
“Anything... anything...” I manage to gasp. “Please just stop.”
“Describe the obscene rituals you have observed. Did the heretic Goya lead them?”
“What? No.”
Fra Gilberto again signals Brother Ignacio and he tilts his jug.
“No!” I scream. “I mean, yes! Whatever you say! Yes, rituals! Dancing! Blasphemies! The Devil himself! Goya, too! Yes, all of us!”
“Good. That is very good, girl. You have confessed. You might just have saved your very soul,” says the monk. “You will find out very shortly. Brother Bruno, begin the auto-da-fé. Let the blade take her.”
The sonorous chant from the gallery above begins again as Bruno walks toward the lever that will free the scythe. Oh, Lord, I am coming . . .
But Brother Bruno does not pull the lever. In fact, he does little else in this world.
There is a splintering crash from the door behind me and I hear shouts... then shots, and Brother Bruno falls to the ground. I am suddenly surrounded by grim-looking men—men with bandoleros across their chests, men with guns and knives in their belts—and one of them is Pablo Montoya.
“Kill them, brothers,” he shouts, and they do it. Brother Ignacio is cut down, screaming, by a sword thrust through his gut. The water jug crashes to the floor.
More shots ring out and several of the figures in the choir slump over, and they sure ain’t singing anymore, no they ain’t. They’re too busy dying.
“Hold that one,” orders Montoya, pointing at a very stricken Fra Gilberto, who still stands by the side of the rack. “Help the boy get her loose. Hurry. Some of those up there got away. They will spread the alarm.”
One of the men pulls the rachet on the rack’s wheel and it relaxes its grip on me.
Oh, thank you, God!
In my daze, I realize that someone is fumbling with my wrist straps and muttering curses.
“Rotten bastards! May they all rot in hell!”
“Cesar? Is it really you?”
“Sí, Señorita. When they took you, I followed them to the Basilica and then ran for Montoya. I am sorry we took so long getting here, but he had to gather his men,” says Cesar. “Oh, pobrecita, what agony you must have endured!”
The last of the bindings is removed and someone sits me up. I am groggy, but I manage to get up and throw my legs over the side.
“Yeeeow!” I cry when I stand and the pain hits my joints. Cesar catches me on my way to the floor.
“Pick her up,” orders Montoya, and Cesar gets one arm under my useless legs and the other under my shoulders and lifts me. I put my face against his chest and sob, all strength and pride gone.
Montoya looks up at the blade hanging ready.
“Anselmo, Fernando. Put him on his foul machine and strap him down.”
“Sí, Comandante,” say the men, taking the suddenly comprehending Fra Gilberto and putting him on the rack. When the straps are around his wrists and ankles, Montoya goes to him and rips open the front of his red robe.
He leans down and speaks into the Inquisitor’s stunned face. “You will now go to your god, false priest, and you will be judged. Augustin! Pull the lever. Vamos, compadres!”
As I am carried through the door, I hear a very familiar sound...
Swoooosh!
. . . followed by a very long scream.
“We must flee the city, chica,” says Montoya over his shoulder. “They will be after us.” I have been put up behind him on his horse and we clatter through the darkened streets.
“Yes, Pablo, but not yet,” I say, clinging to him. “I must go back to Casa Goya. There are things I have to get... and something I must do.”
“Very well, girl, but you must be quick about it.”
My mouth is set into a grim line.
Oh, I will be quick, all right . . . very quick.
Cesar and I burst into Estudio Goya to find an astounded Master, Amadeo, and Asensio. My strength had returned to me on the way here, and the pain in my joints has lessened.
“Carmelita has betrayed all of us to the Inquisition, especially you, Maestro,” I say, my chest heaving. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs,” says Amadeo, perplexed. “But I don’t understand.”
“You will,” I say, as I bolt up the stairs. “Cesar will explain.”
I dash into my room, grab my seabag, and pull out my toreador pants. Stripping off skirt and drawers, I examine my belly.
Good. It is only a thin graze, but the next swing of that awful blade would surely have opened me up. Food for future nightmares, but now I must be off.
I am stuffing myself into the trousers when Amadeo comes in.
“This is terrible, Jack-ie. I cannot say how sorry I am for what you have suffered,” he says.
“It is all right now, Amadeo. How is Maestro taking it?”
“He is moving the household. We will be gone by midnight. Carmelita will be sent back to her family.”
“Good. It is what she deserves. Now, Amadeo, please take your painting of me off the stretcher bars and roll it up. I wish to take it with me.”
“You are not coming with us, Jacquelina?”
“No, Amadeo, I am not,” I say. “Remember when I said I was a British spy and you thought I made a joke? Well, it is the truth, and I must flee for my life. Put the painting in my bag there, then set it out in the hall. I shall pick it up shortly.”
Taking my wineskin from my bedstead, I stride with great purpose to Carmelita’s room.
“Madre de Dios!” she exclaims as I enter to find her sitting on the edge of her bed in her nightclothes. “You!”
“Yes, it is I, Carmelita,” I snarl, advancing on her. “The one you betrayed and sentenced to an awful death. It gives me great pleasure to inform you that Goya has been informed of the full extent of your treachery and you are to be sent back to your family in disgrace.”
She gasps and puts her knuckle to her mouth as I advance on her.
“Get away from me!” she says, shrinking back.
“Oh, I will get away from you,” I say with a smile, as I pull my wineskin from my shoulder. “But not just yet. You see, I want you to experience something before I go... something for you to remember me by.”
“No!” she cries, as I leap upon her and force her back on the bed, such that her head hangs over the side. Sitting on her chest, I uncork the wineskin.
“This is what it felt like, you miserable scheming bitch!” I snarl, sticking the nozzle of the skin into her right nostril.
“No, please! I am sorry! I—”
But that’s as far as she gets as I give the bag a good hard squeeze. I am gratified see her eyes fly wide open as she gargles on the water. She gasps for breath as I pull the spout out of her right nostril and put it in her left one.
“And that’s not all they did to me, Carmelita, oh no. They stretched me on the rack and they pulled me apart, but you see I came back together. They cut me, they did, and they hurt me, but this was the worst of all.”
I put my hand over her mouth and squeeze again. Her eyes are now bugging out in a most satisfying way.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? Feels like you’re drowning, don’t it, sweetheart? Here, have another.”
This time I take my hand off her mouth and am gratified to see her vomit the water and what looks to be her dinner all over herself. I sling the wineskin back over my shoulder and stand, leaving her gasping and choking on what once was her bed but shall be her bed nevermore.
“They called you a good Catholic girl in that dungeon, for your betrayal of the House of Goya. Huh! Well, the next time you are on your knees in the confessional, I suggest you confess it all, Carmelita. Maybe God will forgive you, but I certainly shall not!”
With that, I turn and see Carmelita Gomez no more, and of that I am glad.
I run back to my room and find Amadeo standing by my bag.
“Thank you, mi amigo,” I say. “One final kiss for you, my good friend, and then I must be off. I did enjoy your company.”
I grab his collar and pull him to me. An avid kiss is given, breathlessly received, and I am off down the stairs.
The place is in a turmoil of hurried packing, but Cesar is there waiting for me, looking stricken.
“They say you are leaving, Jack-ie.”
“Yes, Cesar,” I say, my hands on his shoulders. “But you must remember this, my bold young man, you are my one true love at this place, and I mean that. Adiós, mi corazón.”
I plant a kiss, a real kiss, on his lips and head toward the door and out to where Montoya waits for me with a horse. I bound up into the saddle and wave to those assembled on the steps to see me off.
“Goodbye, Maestro, you were so good to me. Adiós, Asensio, Cesar, Paloma, Ramona...”
I lift my hat and put my heels to my mount and call out, “Viva España!”
PART III
Chapter 37
We pounded out of Madrid in the dead of the night, leaving a very shocked Spanish Inquistion behind us... and a stunned Estudio Goya, as well. I know the studio will get over it. I hope the Inquisition does not.
It was an hour’s ride to the guerrilla encampment, and my bones cried out from their recent exercise under the kind care of the Holy Office, but I managed to make it without too much whining. Nothing broken, so nothing spoken... except for a few whimpers, but oh, it hurts, it hurts . . .
There is a campfire burning as we rein in, outlying guards having already announced our arrival. We dismount and I manage to stand as I meet the other members of Montoya’s band. I had already met Augustin, Anselmo, and Fernando in the dungeon pit, but now I have been made known to Primitivo, Rafael, and the brothers Andres and Eladio...
. . . and to Pilar Montoya.
This Pilar looks me over with a certain amount of disdain. She is a stocky woman of about forty years. She, too, is adorned with bandoleros and pistols. About her waist is a thick leather skirt. Below that, heavy boots. There is no nonsense about her.
“So, Pablo, you have brought back a foundling,” she says, her voice cold. “Just what we need.”
“She is not what she seems, Pilar,” says Montoya. “Jacquelina, mi esposa, Pilar,” he continues by way of introduction.
I bow, since I’m not wearing a skirt in which I might curtsy, and murmur, “Con mucho gusto, Señora Montoya,” but it seems to have little effect.
“So what are we to do with her?”
“She must be taken back to the English army in Portugal.”
“Must she?”
“Sí. She works for them.”
“What of the fight, Pablo? Eh? What of our cause? Have you forgotten?”
“The British will pay us well if we do it. I sense she is valuable to them.”
She looks at me and snorts. “That?” she says.
It is becoming plain to me that it is this Pilar and not her husband, Pablo, who really runs things around here. Maybe that is why he spends so much time in Madrid.
“Sí, Pilar,” says Pablo, somewhat abashed. “They will give us money and we will be able to buy better weapons... guns... powder... to better fight the French pigs.”
“Humph,” grunts Pilar, unconvinced.
I step forward.
“I will not be a burden on you and your fine men, Señora. I can ride and I can shoot. I am used to the hard life in the field.”
She gives an exasperated sigh of disgust. “Very well. You can cook and clean up after the men until we can dump you off and—”
I turn and leap back into the saddle. “I will not do that, Señora,” I say, looking down on her. “I shall ride with you and I will fight, if it comes to that. But I will not be a scrubwoman.”
My bag is packed and sits behind me. I can be gone in an instant. “Pablo, and you others, thank you for saving my life today.” I stick my finger in my side pocket and pull out a few coins and toss them on the ground. “That is for the horse. Adiós, mi amigos!”
I turn the horse’s head and prepare to ride off, but Pablo reaches up and grabs the horse’s halter and looks to his wife.
She shrugs and mutters, “Muy bien, ella puede permanecer. But if she causes any trouble”—she cocks her hand into the shape of a pistol and points her finger at my face— “she is gone.”
Pilar fixes me with her hard gaze and pulls the imaginary trigger.
And I know exactly what to expect from her.
And so I now ride as a member of Comandante Pablo Montoya’s guerrilla band, my legs clasped around a very good horse, my hat on my head, no wig for me now, oh, no, for El Rubio now rides as La Rubia, The Blonde Partisan, two pistols held high, a cry of Libertad! on her lips.
Well, sort of like that...
Mostly I ride into any encounter firing my pistolas into the air, shouting revolutionary slogans, prancing about, and trying not to kill anybody.
Generally, we ambush small French convoys from whom we take supplies—food, powder, small arms. Once, we managed to capture a good-size cannon mounted on a caisson. Perhaps it will come in handy.
While I try not to kill anybody, men are indeed killed and left by the side of the road. It is war, after all, and men will die. Some of ours, some of theirs...
After one such encounter, birds circle in the sky as we withdraw from the scene of the violent action, leaving dead men on the ground.
As we ride, I look up and Pilar sees me doing it. She smiles grimly.
“Sí, muchacha,” she says as we push back into the hills. “It is said that Napoleon loves his soldiers...” She pauses to spit on the ground. “But, you see, the buzzards love them, too.”
I think of my Clodhoppers, the French boys in my squad back at the killing fields of Jena Auerstadt. I hope you all went back home after that carnage, I hope that with all my heart. Laurent . . . Dubois . . . all of you fine boys. I would hate to think of any of you lying still and open-eyed beneath the pitiless Spanish sun, beneath those descending carrion- seeking birds.
/> The men call me La Apasionada, and it pleases them to do so, so I do not mind. At night, by the campfire, I sing, I dance... A fiddle has been found for me and I play upon it, and all cheer and shout; and joy, however short-lived, reigns.
And so my legend grows . . . Why, I do not know, but it does, in spite of me . . .
Chapter 38
James Emerson Fletcher
Shaolin Novice
House of Chen
Rangoon, Burma
Jacky Faber
By All Accounts, Somewhere in Spain
My dear Jacky,
Today I received both an honor and some very good news.
Early in the afternoon, Sifu Loo Li and I face off. We bow and go to the en garde position, which now I know is called Waiting Dragon, our Bo staffs resting on our shoulders, our knees bent in lunging position. He initiates the bout by going into the Attack of the Angry Butterfly, in which his stick is held low to the ground and then whipped around to attempt to strike me at the shoulders. I parry with the Whispering of the Willow Wand and come back with Awakening of Sleeping Bee.
I find the Shaolin names for these moves quite charming. In our own British Navy Manual of Arms, a saber swing at the neck of an opponent, hoping to open his jugular vein, is called Attack in Position Two, while in Bojutsu, it would be named something like Gentle Caress of Sharp Banana Leaf. Very poetic... but just as deadly.
Sifu Loo Li and I fight to a draw. A break is called and we take tea with Kwai Chang, cross-legged on the grass. There are several other Shaolin monks in attendance as well, and all have been watching our bout. These monks do not wear the novice dragon tattoo that rests on Sifu Loo Li’s forearm, no, they have one on each arm, entwined with vines and flowers. These are the true Masters of Bojutsu.
“We are quite pleased with your perfomance, Chueng Tong,” says Master Chang. “You have come a long way in your time here...”
. . . for a barbarian, I think, silently filling in the unspoken words.