The Summer of the Spanish Woman

by Catherine Gaskin

  We drove to Jerez, not to the bodega, but to Las Fuentes, the mansion of Don Paulo, to which neither I nor my mother had ever been invited. It was grander, even, than the mansion of Don Luis. It reflected not just the money of the sherry trade, but the money of all the many enterprises which Maria Luisa had said that Don Paulo had invested in with the help of the Marquesa de Pontevedra’s fortune. The house sat on a slight rise, and got its name, Las Fuentes, from the four fountains, each set at a different level, which sent water spuming into the air and cascading down to the lowest pool. The shrieking of peacocks greeted our arrival. There was a variety of exotic ducks; flamingos paraded their thin pink legs. All this Carlos had left for the poverty of the vineyard house. No wonder he had hesitated. I had already forgiven that hesitation. Now I understood it.

  I was not, at that time, to enter the house. Don Paulo came to the carriage and took his seat opposite me. Immediately the carriage started to move again.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We are going, Doña Carlota, to Arcos ‒ to Arcos de la Frontera, where my wife, the Marquesa de Pontevedra, has a castle.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘That, in due course, you will discover.’

  Then the hooded eyes seemed to close even further, as if he were some kind of lizard, waiting patiently, motionless, for the unsuspecting insect to come within range. I felt helpless, mesmerised, and the sweat on my body had little to do with the heat of the morning.

  * *

  It was a long drive to Arcos ‒ or it seemed so then. We passed the place where the black cows stood, sheltering in the shade of the trees. Then we passed the eucalyptus grove where my child had been conceived. Even in the extremity of my nervousness, I gave it a secret and loving greeting. I thought that, apart from Clonmara, it was the place on earth I would most like to own, and then dismissed that too, as an impossible dream.

  The twin hills of Arcos de la Frontera rose spectacularly from the gentle swell of the country we had been travelling. On one side of the town sheer cliffs fell to the river, the Guardalete, and the plain below; I saw, through the heat haze, what seemed to be the crenellated walls of two castles, one dominating each peak, both with square towers brooding over the plain. Buzzards flew beneath them, and found resting places among the crags. Everything of the might and majesty of Old Spain was there, frowning with a kind of holy menace. I had imagined such places existed only in the illustrations of fairy-tales. I felt a nervous twist of my stomach, and fought against nausea.

  I began to understand why, on that long journey, we had only two horses as we began to ascend the ever-narrowing streets of the town; a coach and four would never have negotiated the twists and bends. The two footmen had got down to lighten the load. Once I felt a sickening lurch as one of the horses half-slipped trying to gain purchase on the worn cobbles. Instantly one footman was at its head, the other lifting the harness pole to help it recover. We were in deep shade between those tall, white buildings and yet the air was stifling. Then abruptly we were in a large, flat plaza, with one open side which seemed to vanish into air; only a thin railing guarded against the drop to the river below. The sun was blinding, harsh, brutal. The carriage circled the plaza, and stopped at one corner.

  ‘Here we must walk. The horses can go no further.’ I felt the reluctant touch of Don Paulo’s hand on my arm as I got down, and my flesh seemed to creep. I walked beside him, silently, as we moved up a twisting lane between stone walls, where windows with barred grilles stared down upon us. At last we came to the massive doors beneath a Gothic arch, surmounted by two crests. We were expected and had been observed. A small portal within the gates opened to admit us. The man who greeted us wore a different and even more splendid livery than the servants of Don Paulo.

  There was yet another steep twisting lane between buildings before we gained the garden courtyard of the castle. The place itself was built of lovely yellow stone, which had, in the distance made it seem to merge into the golden rock of the cliff-face. It seemed very ancient, and as if parts of it had been built at different periods. Three wells were placed about the courtyard, and I heard the cooling trickle of water. The winding way we had come to gain the castle courtyard had brought us the view, once again, to the second castle perched where the cliff curved, and which commanded yet a further stretch of the river and plain below. Half the town lay between them, but they stared at each other, twin guardians of the rich and beautiful countryside. I no longer wondered that it had been part of the frontier between the Moorish and Christian kingdoms. Whoever held these castles, held the plain.

  Involuntarily I had halted. Not for anything would I have admitted my breathlessness, since Don Paulo himself had kept up a sharp pace, but the place itself compelled me to stop ‒ to stop and wonder at it.

  Here Don Paulo could continue his silence no longer, as if his pride in his country and its harsh beauty could not be contained. ‘It is Moorish ‒ parts built in the seventh century. We drove the Moors from it, and held it for the Christians. At Granada we finished the Moorish conquest under Their Catholic Majesties, Isabel and Fernando, and Spain was restored forever to Holy Mother Church.’

  From anyone else, in any other place, it would have sounded absurd. Here, it was perfectly suited.

  * *

  We were taken to a long vaulted room whose windows, in massively deep recesses, looked down on the cliff-face, the river, and the wide plain. Now the buzzards swooped beneath us. We were brought copitas by a servant, but I asked for water. Don Paulo’s eyes were on my shaking hand as I drank. The intense silence was unnerving; we waited, and he did not speak again. The height and deep shadow of the room made it seem cool, like a church. Even with Don Paulo’s eyes on me I could not repress a shiver.

  She came at last. She was very tall, and slender; as she moved down that long room, it might have been a young woman who came towards us, but as she came into the light from one of the windows, her hair was not golden, but silver-gilt; her face had begun to show the marks of age. I had the impression of bright, cold blue eyes. She wore black ‒ not Maria Luisa’s kind of black, with ribbons and lace. It was a gown almost medieval in its fashion, as if she were a woman of no century at all. She seemed to wear no adornment until she raised her hand to Don Paulo, and then the fire of emeralds and rubies and diamonds flashed.

  Don Paulo took her hand, but his lips did not quite touch it.

  ‘You are well, Marquesa. I see that.’

  ‘Very well, Santander.’

  A greeting between people who have known each other a long time but are still strangers. ‘Interesting that I should have decided to come to Arcos at this time. Events have outrun you, Santander. It is not like you to be so careless with your possessions. I thought you had learned to take care long ago.’

  ‘We will not speak of that.’

  ‘Indeed we will not,’ she agreed. She had thrust beneath his guard and scored a point. She evidently enjoyed it.

  ‘I have brought Doña Carlota ‒ now my son’s wife ‒ as you requested.’

  ‘As I requested, yes. Now you may leave us, Santander.’

  He looked outraged, then stifled his reply. He shrugged. ‘As you wish. There is nothing to be done now. Impossible for the marriage to be annulled. As I said in my letter, she is with child. Carlos has reached his majority, and I have no doubt that Lady Patricia would say she had given her consent. It is better to leave matters as they are. Carlos has made his own bed …’

  ‘Leave us, Santander!’

  I waited in agony as he walked the length of the room, and closed the door. As formidable as he was, at least he was familiar. Now I was alone with the Spanish Woman of legend at Clonmara, the Spanish Woman of one summer twenty-five years ago.

  She gestured for me to be seated. Was it some sort of cruelty which made her place me so that the light fell directly on my face, so that nothing could be hidden? ‒ while she remained standing, her face in shadow.

  ‘So … you are Blod
more’s granddaughter.’ As I did not reply she was forced to go on. ‘So … you took away Don Paulo’s son, his beloved son, Carlos, for whom he had such plans. How he must hate you! ‒ as he hated your grandfather!’ Suddenly a laugh, an almost wild but still mirthless laugh broke from her lips. ‘What a blow! Did you guess what you were doing to him? After all these years yet another Blodmore comes to break his heart.’

  ‘I didn’t know …’ My lips trembled; I felt ill, and prayed I would not disgrace myself by being sick on the magnificent oriental carpet of that grand and ancient room. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t planned.’ Then life seemed to snap back into my flaccid limbs. I straightened my back. ‘It wasn’t planned, you know. Carlos and I just happened … just happened to become lovers.’ The words were said. I wasn’t ashamed; I would not feel shame about what had seemed so right.

  ‘Just happened …’ Did that harsh, commanding voice soften just a trifle? ‘How fortunate for you. Many men have said they loved me. I never knew. Who would not say they loved the fortune and position Isabel de Pontevedra had to bestow? And none of my lovers gave me a child!’ It was a primitive cry of anguish and anger, almost incredible coming from a woman of her age and position to someone as insignificant as myself, a stranger. She went on. ‘I did not feel barren. No doctor ever told me I was barren. But no man was able to give me a child. I might have had Blodmore’s child ‒ but I didn’t. And you ‒ in a few weeks you are with child and you have married Carlos. How quick you Irish are, when it suits you. I remember Blodmore was quick to want me, to take me when I permitted it. I lingered in Ireland all one summer because of Blodmore, and then he pursued me to Spain. He wanted to marry me ‒ did you know that?’

  ‘They still talk, at Clonmara, of the time you were there. They call it the summer of the Spanish Wo ‒ Lady. They expected my grandfather would marry you. They said he was infatuated with you.’

  ‘Infatuated with my money! He ‒’

  ‘My grandfather was not like that! I know it. And he didn’t need your money. Not then. He had enough. Oh, he wasn’t rich, like you, but there was as much as he wanted from Clonmara. He didn’t have the taste for grand things. All he wanted was his horses, and Clonmara. It was only after he came back from Spain that he began to try to get money ‒ any way he could. Doing foolish things. Making mad investments. No one ever knew what happened to him while he was in Spain. Did you think he wasn’t good enough for you ‒ wasn’t rich enough? Was it you who made him so mad for money that he lost almost everything? Was it to try to impress you that he bought that absurd big house in Jerez? He had the money to buy that then, and to lend money to Don Paulo, who needed money. You say my grandfather was your lover, but you married Don Paulo.’

  She half turned from me; her hands went to her face in a gesture of rage, or pain; I couldn’t tell which. All I saw was the flash of the jewels on her long fingers. The sun made a halo of the fine silver hairs that stood out about her head. It was possible she had never been a beautiful woman, but she would always have commanded attention.

  ‘You Blodmores! I loved him! ‒ and I didn’t trust him! I loved no other man, but I was right not to trust him. I knew the difference between passion and love, and I held off. I held off, and I lost him!’

  I thought she had not meant to say so much. I thought she had meant only to satisfy some curiosity about me, to torture me a little with her questions, but something about me had put her in disarray. Was I really so like my grandfather at times, as they said I was, that I had unnerved her? ‘I loved him,’ she had cried. Such words would not have come easily from the Marquesa de Pontevedra.

  ‘You lost him, Marquesa? I cannot believe that. You could have had him at any time, I am told. You need never have left Ireland.’

  ‘I had to try him, and I lost him! His precious Clonmara! I had to show him how much else I had to give him. I took him on a tour of all my estates in Spain. Clonmara was nothing beside what was mine. But you Irish are so careless ‒ so indifferent to anything besides your own little world. Yes, perhaps he really didn’t care for more than he already had, but I had to show him what was mine! I made him woo me ‒ and I hoped he’d win me. I played with him, but too long. I lost him. He proved not to be the mouse to my cat’s game. I lost him.’

  ‘How could you have lost him? ‒ and why do you blame me now? And why do you say that another Blodmore has come to break Don Paulo’s heart? Don Paulo married you. He won you. How could anything my grandfather did have broken Don Paulo’s heart?’ Once more I experienced that weak trembling. She was more than I could deal with; my inexperience was too deep in the face of her complexity.

  ‘Because,’ she said, ‘Blodmore took the thing that was dearest to Santander’s heart ‒ the thing that would have raised him above others. Something dearer to him than Carlos, more precious ‒ more precious, even, I think, than his beloved vineyards.’

  She was silent for a time, studying me. I did not dare to speak, to question any more. She compelled me, utterly.

  With an abrupt, almost impulsive gesture she turned. ‘Come! It is time you knew. You will live here among us, and you will know. But you will never, never speak of what you have seen this day. You will know how Blodmore betrayed me, betrayed Santander, and ruined his own life. If things did not go well for him it was no more than he deserved …’

  She was hurrying away from me, down the long room. I went after her quickly; somehow being left there alone seemed worse than anything she could tell or show me. I sensed that something in me had thrown her off guard. The moment might never come again, if, indeed, I should ever see her again.

  We went out into the courtyard once more, crossed it to a separate wing of this three-sided building, whose fourth side was the open sky, and the sheer cliff-face. She never once looked back to see if I followed. She was accustomed to obedience. But even she had to pause and knock at a door, and wait there until a small window in it was opened, and her identity established. Then the door swung open instantly, and the woman on the other side curtseyed deeply. The Marquesa swept past without even a glance at her.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She works at the loom, Marquesa.’

  I followed her to a room that was almost the equal in size to the one we had left; but here the handiwork of the Moors who had built it was much more evident. There were pillars and arches here, each decorated with delicate filigree in their stonework; there were portions of the room which still retained their original tiled walls, laid out with the brilliant mathematical jigsaw that I had been told was the hallmark of the long-ago inhabitants of this world, they whose religion prohibited the depiction of any image. Here the windows seemed larger, and the light poured in. At our entrance a woman, in the plain dress of a servant, or a companion, rose from where she was sitting, working at a lace pattern laid out on an embroidery cushion. With a gesture the Marquesa dismissed her, she went swiftly, softly, on slippered feet.

  Close to one of the great window alcoves a girl sat at a large loom, her hand skilfully throwing the shuttle, while her feet worked the pedals. She was working something in silk which in many respects resembled the tilework about her, but the colours were rich and bright, unfaded by the centuries. Her hair, the colour of straw bleached by the sun, but as silken as the threads she handled, lay on her shoulders in soft curls. She was slightly built, and her hands were very pretty as she worked the shuttle. She was dressed in white, a young girl dressed in what seemed to me to be the fashion of many years ago.

  ‘Mariana?’ The Marquesa’s voice now was soft. The movement at the loom stopped. The head turned slowly.

  It was no young girl I looked at. Her hair was not bleached straw-coloured, but white. The woman had remarkably deep blue eyes, the colour of the wild violets that grow in the ditches of Ireland, but they were strangely expressionless eyes. If she had lines in her face it was impossible to see them for the deep encrustations on her skin. Her face was scarred and pitted so that I could hardly discern any feat
ures. If she had ever had beauty, all that was left were the violet eyes.

  She looked from the Marquesa to me, and for an instant some sort of recognition seemed to come to those blank eyes. She opened her mouth, as if to speak, and then closed it again. The blank, glazed look returned.

  ‘Mariana, will you not show us your children?’ The words were said first in Spanish, then repeated in English.

  Obediently, like a puppet, the woman rose. I felt a sense of horror grow in me as the effect of that strange figure in her young girl’s dress and white hair worn in ringlets about her ravaged face began to work. I felt my stomach lurch, and once more fought against nausea. I expected her to summon the companion to bring the children to her, or to lead us to a schoolroom, or playroom, but all she did was to walk to the farthest end of the long room. We followed.

  Beyond the last arch, which was more elaborate in design than the others, the filigree of its stone so light it seemed to have been spun as lace, there was a step which raised this part of the room. There was no window here; it was slightly in shadow. A brazier stood in the middle, ready for winter use. It would be easy to imagine some caliph receiving here, in the privacy of this deep recess, emissaries and advisers, their whispered voices far removed from the others in the room. Or had this been the place for the favourite of the harem?

  It was no such place now. Six cradles stood there, their flounces of lawn and lace falling to the floor, their hoods decorated with gay Moorish patterns and hanging silken balls. But if there were infants lying in them they were strangely, uncannily, silent. There was no sound of breathing, nor any movement of a tiny fist towards the balls. I peered into the nearest, and a wax face, a perfect angel’s face, looked back at me, white, pink-cheeked, blue glass eyes as expressionless as those of the woman. I looked beyond it to the next cradle, which was empty. In the next was an unbelievably life-like form turned on its side, a wax hand laid under a cheek, as if it slept peacefully. Then, in the corner, on a silken oriental rug, three wax dolls sat upright. They seemed to smile sightlessly at each other. All were dressed in exquisite clothes, fine linens and laces, many petticoats. The wax hand of one was extended towards a ball that lay on the rug between them. Another doll was on hands and knees, as if crawling towards the ball. They were a uniquely perfect example of the wax-worker’s art, and they struck me as coldly as a sigh from the grave.