by Kit Brennan
Then misfortune befell me. One of the Misses Aldridge wrote to Sir Jasper Nicolls, asking him to remove me from the school (for a reason I cannot bear to think about). Back in Reading, I’d cowered before him. He called me “wretch Gilbert!” and said he had written to Craigie in the most strenuous terms. I was to live in one room at the top of the house. I was to receive meals but tell no one else that I was there, and I was to let no one see me in my shameful condition. Ultimately, I was to comply with whatever decision was put forth by my stepfather.
Oh, I cannot think of this. Not now.
Eventually, I was returned to the Aldridge School. The evening before I departed his house for the last time, Sir Jasper summoned me to the library to say, “We see no sign from you, Betty, that you will amount to anything but trouble. But what can one expect? I likened your mother, the first moment I laid eyes upon her, to a tortoise that buries her eggs lightly in the sand and leaves them to sun and to chance. You are the same.”
“I am not!”
“Silence! Sooner or later, you will be reclaimed, although the goods are certainly damaged.”
I am shaking now, the memory of it is so real. I had so little knowledge of the world, of men, of the ways in which smaller creatures have always been and always will be buffeted between opposing forces before being consumed by the most powerful in a great, voracious crunching of tiny bones. Though these men publicly profess to love and honour the “weaker sex”—Nicolls with his daughters, Dumas with his mistresses—they do not behave as if they do, obsessed as they are with belittling, deriding, and sneering at our minds, our bodies, and our dreams. So, yes, in the Café de Paris, as I stole another glance at Alexandre Dumas, with his shrewd piggy eyes, proclaiming in his loud voice, I again felt small, unimportant, and vehemently, immoderately angry.
The morning after the Parisian theatre excursion, I woke with an awful headache and its accompanying dread: An attack was imminent. Since contracting it during the rainy season the year I’d returned to India, bouts of malaria periodically knocked me flat. It began as it always does, with abdominal pain and sore muscles, swiftly followed by fever, dizziness, the chills, and sweats. I begged the Grimaldis to procure me quinine before the thing took hold, managing to ask between gusts of vomiting, white as a sheet, teeth chattering like castanets.
By the third day I was sitting up in bed and taking some soup, which the petite servant Francine had brought up. I was so hungry that I was groaning, spooning it in as quickly as possible, and biting greedily into a freshly baked roll slathered with butter. Suddenly, Grimaldi burst through the door. He shooed Francine away: “Out, out of here! Go!” He was carrying a parcel under his arm, containing a box, and he slammed it down upon the table at the end of the bed. Then he returned to the door and locked it. This alarmed me greatly. He had never locked a door with me in the room, alone. The expression on his face alarmed me even more.
“You are better today? Your strength is returning?” He strode to the window and impatiently yanked the curtain aside to stare down into the street. “We must capitalize upon what you have learned and send you hence. Your wit and bravado must make up for whatever skill may still be lacking, since it appears we have no time to waste.”
What could have happened? He let the curtain fall again and turned to look at me. “Forgive me, Rosana. I see I must go back several steps, and then you must come forwards with me as swiftly as possible, or all may be lost. You agree?”
What could I say? “Very well.”
He took the tray with soup and bread and placed it on the side table, then retrieved the mysterious box. “You don’t feel faint anymore? You are quite strong?”
Well, that was pushing it, but the restlessness in his eyes did not allow me to gainsay him, so I nodded.
He brought the box over and placed it on my lap. “Look inside.”
Opening the flaps, I saw wood shavings and ripped pieces of paper. “Underneath,” came the directive. Pushing the material aside, I tried to feel for the object he must wish me to see but he cried, “Wait!” He reached, himself, to pull a wad of the shavings away, and then . . . At first I thought I was looking at a pair of large toadstools or field mushrooms of some kind. I peered and again put out my hand. Just as I was about to lift one of the objects, I finally understood what I was seeing. It seems impossible to recognize such things out of their usual context, they simply will not fall into place in one’s mind because it seems so unlikely to see them lying in a box. They were a pair of large, filthy, human ears.
“Oh my God!” I gasped and recoiled, banging my head hard on the headboard.
“Cochons! Murderers.” He sat down upon the bed, setting the box to one side. I was sure the soup was about to make a reappearance, but I closed my eyes and held up my hand to stop him from continuing while I struggled for control. He waited, and after some moments, I was able to open my eyes again. My thoughts in turmoil, I said, “What does it mean?”
“It means . . .” He took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows, then frowned mightily. “It means, without doubt, that Tristany is dead.”
“And who . . . ?”
“He is—he was—your predecessor.”
“What do you mean, predecessor?”
“What it usually means, querida. The one who went before you.”
“Oh my God!” I cried again, this time more loudly and with even greater anxiety. I pulled my legs in under me and rose up on the mattress, exclaiming, “Is this why you haven’t—? Because all along, you knew—! That it was dangerous, full of bandits and terror and, and death!” I was on my feet now, flailing about. “And I’m just dispensable, just a stupid girl from another country and no one knows that I’m here, no one important, and so you think you can just—! But that’s not true! My member of Parliament knows, the 3rd Earl of Malmesbury knows that I’m here and he’ll send a dragoon—no, a platoon of dragoons!—to come and fetch me home as soon as he realizes that I’m—That I . . .” There was a logistical problem with this line of thought, but I couldn’t, at that precise moment, think what it might be.
“Are you finished?”
“No!” I cried, but then unfortunately I fell down again due to the softness and unsteadiness of the mattress. The box hurtled to the floor and the ears spilled forth, their severed edges illuminated in the sunshine from the window. My teeth began to chatter again as I crawled back in under the covers, pulling them up to my trembling chin.
“Rosana, listen to me,” Grimaldi said. “This will not happen to you, not if you listen very carefully to what I am about to tell you.”
“Oh my God.”
“There are many plots in the Spanish court, although it is our fortune that Cristina is here in Paris. Her daughters, however, are not. They remain in Madrid, under the protection of the prime minister, General Espartero.”
“But . . . the ears?”
“I am coming to that. The princesses, Isabel and Luisa Fernanda, are twelve and ten. Isabel will be queen as soon as she comes of age; heads of state and conspirators are already lining up the list of possible suitors for her hand. The Bourbon women mature quickly, so this happy event is expected in the very near future, for as soon as the girl is capable of being a mother, she is certainly capable of being queen and a wife. Hence Cristina’s anxiety—she wishes to return to Spain, to live once again in the court of her reigning daughter. But there are difficulties, not only in the undoubtedly tricky area of potential consorts. There is a new tutor.”
“For the girls? Why is that difficult?”
“He is on the other side. It is abominable to be so far away, to hear only rumors! And now this!” He poked moodily at an ear with the tip of his shoe, and I tried not to gorge.
“Who was he?” I asked. I feared the answer.
Grimaldi looked at me with a faraway expression, then sat heavily upon the bed. “The best of my agents. They are Tristany’s, of this I am sure. There is a mole, small but distinctive, inside the left pinna as it leads to t
he ear canal. He used to laugh and say it was his mole, his own personal spy, and it made him invincible.”
“How terrible.”
“Nothing else arrived in the package, which means he was tortured, and in all likelihood it was a long, miserable dying. Spanish vengeance is not something to take lightly, Rosana.”
How had the room become so tiny and cramped?
“The war has been obscene for its atrocities. We thought nothing could be worse than the war of independence, after Napoleon, but . . . Memories are long. Terrible old men; terrible young men. Murdering women and children, exacting vengeance—one kills the other’s mother in broad daylight by firing squad, the other kills the first’s son with extreme savagery in retaliation. Unstoppable. Unspeakable.” His face looked grey. “Just three years ago, all of Catalonia was under the sway of the count of España and his reign of terror. He was only stopped by being outwitted; a junta invited him to a council meeting, overpowered him, and took him prisoner. Then, with the junta’s knowledge, he was strangled and his body was thrown into the river with a stone tied to it. Good riddance. But others leap up where one has gone down: General Maroto in Estella killed his fellow generals after inviting them to take chocolate with him. Maroto has now surrendered and sworn loyalty to the Cristinos, but who can believe him? Who would trust him? Turncoats for expedience. It is dangerous, the new prominence that has been given to—been seized by—Spain’s military leaders. No good will come of it.”
I had never seen Grimaldi look so old; the skin around his eyes was pouchy, and his cheeks were hollow.
“Tristany was a friend?” I put my hand on his arm. I’m not sure he even felt it.
“The son of a friend, yes. A fine, brave, aristocratic family. What will I tell his father? Yet, he must already know.”
“But what did Tristany do to warrant such . . . ?” What I needed to know was, what did Grimaldi make him do that would prompt such retaliation?
“We must start.” He stood quickly and shook his head, as if freeing it of horrible visions. “We have come too far for you to be deflected, Rosana. No one would hurt a young foreign woman; no one would dare.” I didn’t know about that, not if the stories he’d just related were true. Grimaldi picked up a clump of the sawdust and with that as shield replaced the ears in the box. “Get dressed. Cristina has summoned us and we must not keep her waiting. Everything is accelerating; everything must happen now. No, before now: yesterday!” He strode to the door, opened it and called for Concepción, and then returned to the window, clasped his hands behind his back and glared out.
He wasn’t going to leave me alone to dress. This was also new, and frightened me a little bit. I swung my feet out of the bed to stand, still dizzy from the illness.
His wife entered on the run, closed the door behind her and locked it again.
“Never mind the underthings, make haste,” she snapped, rifling through my dresses and pulling out the soft pink one with all the frills and furbelows dancing down the front of it. I felt it made me look babyish, but maybe that’s what they wanted, to emphasize my youth for the meeting with royalty. Certainly Concepción had no intention of letting me choose another one. She yanked the laces until I was gasping. As I twisted my hair up, securing it with a comb, she dug through the wardrobe and lobbed a pair of shoes out, one at a time, hitting me sharply on the ankle, twice. My reflection in the wardrobe mirror looked like hell, but why should that have surprised me? Wracked with malaria, gagging at lopped ears? “Ready.”
“Sit down, Rosana.”
I did. He pulled up another chair as Concepción hovered sternly behind him. “Time to tell you exactly what is necessary.”
“A few days ago, I would have rejoiced,” I said, “but now—”
“Be quiet and listen. You are, in your heart, a reckless and bold young woman. I have recognized this from the look in your eye when you hit a target. Even I, far too old for you, can elicit a sensual response—don’t bother to refute it. I envy the man you genuinely care for, if what I have experienced is only a small substitute. Either that or I pity him, since your blatant physicality seems to know no checks and balances.”
“Oh! That is a lie! That is rude!” I was shocked; this was not the kind of tête-à-tête I had expected. I tried to rise, but Grimaldi placed an iron grip upon my thigh as Concepción gave a little puff of contempt.
“It is time to earn your keep after all of this cosseting,” he went on. “I know you are not remotely a lady—”
“Oh!” I cried, and then “Aaah!” as his grip crushed my leg. I would have a bad bruise there, if I knew anything.
“—not remotely. I know this. Señor Hernandez is remarkably thorough. Thanks to Miss Kelly, he was able to ascertain your financial assets, such as they are. Or perhaps I should say as they were—that they were tied up with a certain member of Parliament. Hernandez dug and pried and knows your entire previous history.” A cold shudder ran through me as I prayed, Not all of it, surely? “Your court date was one fact, and it led us to consider you: Evidence of at least one man—a husband—with whom you have had sexual relations. The MP is another. Well and good. The señor’s searches took him straight to, according to the records of the chancery courts, one George Lennox, a third. Much better.”
This was dreadful.
“And then the señor turned up something even more interesting. He pursued all names mentioned in any way in your trial papers: A certain Mrs. Catherine Rae, in Durham, and her husband, Mr. Herbert Rae, came to his attention. Hernandez travelled to Durham; he looked up the address. He watched them. Interestingly, the married couple was quite old; they were in their mid-fifties at least. Why is that interesante? Because—and this made the señor’s mustachio quiver—they had a seven-year-old daughter. Very curious. Not many English people, with no previous offspring, will attempt such a dangerous feat. But perhaps, he thought, perhaps they were lucky, or different. Or the recipients of a baby in another manner. It happens. It happens, especially, within families. What was the connection? He did his research: The woman is the sister of your stepfather, Major Craigie in India. Close and closer. The señor studied the little girl. He contrived to meet her in a park; he returned her ball when it rolled too quickly away from her hoop. He saw a resemblance.”
“Verosímil.” Concepción nodded emphatically and began pacing.
This couldn’t be happening, I thought. The one thing I had promised . . . And not Aunt Catherine, but myself. For the sake of—
“It was the hair and the dark blue eyes that confirmed it.”
And then it was as if I was falling backwards, back into a terrible time: I was again at the Misses Aldridges’, during one of the long, dreary holiday periods. I was fourteen and the only girl remaining in the house. Most of the teachers had also gone; I ate with the cook and the servant. Not that this was a hardship, as I liked them very much, and the young maid was often the admirer of my wickedest pranks. That particular Christmas, she had a cousin arrive from London and had brought him over to eat with us one evening. I wish she hadn’t. He was the very sort of handsome brand-new fellow (cheeks still raw from first shaves) that I would look at sideways on Sundays when the group of us young misses were allowed to walk, crocodile, from the school to the church and back again. Did I know how to speak to the rougher sex? Of course not; I’d had no practice. Did I know what they wanted? No. Did I know what I wanted? Not at all. Just a restlessness, a coal burning somewhere inside. I never knew his name, I didn’t even want to. It wasn’t about a connection that would go on into the future, it was about clothing and flesh and lips and yearning. There were so many layers to what I wore! Eventually we found a way. I helped him with nimble fingers, and the strangeness and shocking immediacy of that burning heat thrust deep inside me was an awakener—I woke up! I smelled India: the searing sun, the flowers, vivid colours, flavours that made you sweat rather than gag. No more oatmeal, no more interminable cups of tepid tea. Give me this! Give me more! I cried out, I laughed
, grabbing at the boy’s buttocks, and before we knew it, we were off again.
Of course, it was a terrible mistake. Of course the gods of irony were up there, waiting. It was all too repeatable. My mother, fourteen when she’d had me, had passed on her insultingly easy fecundity. At first I didn’t know what was happening. I began to eat like a horse—all the girls remarked upon it—but then shortly thereafter I also began to throw it back up. I cried a lot, and I’d been a girl who would never cry, never show fear or dependency, ever. The elder Miss Aldridge was a canny woman and it did not take her long to understand what had happened. One day the maid was in fits of tears, and then disappeared, dismissed. To my horror, Miss Aldridge called me in to her office to inform me that she’d written to Sir Jasper Nicolls.
At the Nicholls’s, confined to the upper floor, I was terrified as I grew larger. Eventually, of course, I figured it out, thanks to the servants who tried to be kind. I felt so ashamed to realize I was like my mother, that I was repeating her history—but with no military husband’s good name to protect me or the child I was carrying. And as usual, I had no idea what to expect would happen afterwards. I only believed it would not be nice. The baby was born, once the normal course of such an event had picked me up and swept me into it, in about one hour, and this shamed me as well. I was fifteen by then. The baby, a little girl, was given to a wet-nurse who lived elsewhere, and I waited, breasts leaking, alert to the patriarch’s towering rage two floors below.