Marriage Made in Rebellion

by Sophia James

  Her birthing pains had come late in a night in the autumn, a welcomed child, a reminder of all that had been good. But the baby had breathed and then stopped. A boy child and perfect in every way save for size.

  After that she had forgotten the promise of the English captain, his troths lost into deceit and distance, and she had thrown her hand in with Maria. A year later the signet ring had been stolen from her chamber at the brothel and she had tossed her rosary into the murky depths of the Manzanares River because she had lost her faith in God and Jesus and hope.

  ‘It could be worse, Antonia.’ Maria’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘We could be out on the street and homeless. As it is we have fresh beef for dinner and beans from the garden. Life is best lived in the moment, my mother used to say, and I think she was right. Besides, if worst comes to the worst, I can always pawn my pearls and they are worth at least a few months’ grace from rent.’

  Time was bought in tiny allotments now, here in Madrid on Segovia Street, in La Latina on the land where an Islamic citadel had once stood. The narrow busy streets opened out on to large tree-lined plazas full of tall colourful houses with Arabic-tiled roofs and elegant iron-fretwork balconies.

  Home. Safe. Surviving.

  Maria was right. There came a time when the line you had once drawn in the sand was shifted and changed.

  Señor Mateo Morales, the son of Alberto Morales, was not a bad man or a violent one. He was unmarried and he had needs. If she wanted to keep the brothel, she would have to meet those needs and it had been a long while since she had had enough money to do exactly as she willed.

  Morality and integrity were the luxuries of the rich and they were indulgences she could no longer afford to rely upon. Breathing out, she felt her heart break quietly, just a soft slice of pain and then nothing.

  * * *

  Antonia thought she might be sick as she dressed in the light gossamer nightdress that was barely there. Eloisa had fashioned her hair in a series of curls and put on the make-up, thick and garish.

  Like a disguise, she mused, like an actress on the stage playing a part. She had so many bracelets around her right wrist and left ankle that whenever she moved she made a sort of music. A harlot’s tune. Maria had oiled her skin so that it glowed.

  Señor Mateo Morales had asked for an hour. To talk, Eloisa had said, and as the servant dispatched to arrange the appointment he had been grand and stand-offish she had not wished to question him further.

  The master did not wish to be kept waiting and he did not wish to be interrupted. The manservant had been most particular about all he did not wish. Privately Antonia thought the younger Morales sounded rather commanding in his stated wants, the thin unpleasant man she had met a week before not quite adding up to one with so many distinct needs.

  She looked at the clock in the corner, a few minutes before ten, and swallowed. She was not a young girl and she was not a virgin. She was a twenty-six-year-old widow with scars on her right wrist and a larger one on the top of her left thigh. Imperfect. Jaded. Damaged.

  Such thoughts settled her. She could do this. She could. One night a week with a man who was not an ogre or a pervert. One night a week to save all of those who lived in the burdel high on the ravine of the San Pedro River before it flowed into the Manzanares.

  Footsteps and a knock on the door. A warning. She had insisted on the courtesy because she did not wish to be surprised.

  Making her way over to the window, she looked out over the streets and plazas and the outline of the old La Latina hospital a good mile away.

  ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...’ She had not recited the verses of the Bible in years and she wondered why she did so now. There was no salvation to be had in any of it.

  * * *

  The room was darker than he expected, a single candle burning on the mantel and the rest of the chamber dim. Lucien waited until the servant departed before shutting the door and hesitated again as his eyes grew accustomed to the light.

  It was a large and well-appointed room, a place of a well-to-do courtesan, he supposed, the smell of floral oil in the air and some other perfume he did not recognise. Musk, perhaps, or the heavy sweetness of jasmine?

  The whore he presumed to be Antonia Herrera y Salazar was standing against the window with her back to him, the gauzy wisp of a petticoat covering little and myriad silver bangles on her right arm. Her hair was bright blood red and fell to her shoulders, the curl of it formal and lacquered. Pearls hung around her neck in one long and drunken strand, the clasp of them hooked into the strap of her chemise to make them skewed.

  Rather than speaking he simply stood there waiting for her to turn. Ten seconds and then twenty. She was small, he saw, and thin. All the skin on her arms had prickled into fear.

  ‘I should tell you before we go to bed that I expect you to honour your promises, Señor Morales.’ Her voice was high, stretched out into some tone that was forced. The accent was that of León and the north, but edged in the theatrical. ‘And I do not allow kissing.’

  ‘Morales?’ He could not understand just who it was she alluded to. ‘Perhaps there has been a mistake, señora. I am here just to talk.’

  At the sound of his voice she whipped about, the look of surprise turning to horror before she had gone halfway and then changing again into unbounded anger fired in fear.

  ‘You.’ Her mouth was open and her green eyes were wide with shock.

  ‘Alejandra? My God.’ He was across the room and taking her arm before he knew it, the velvet of her skin, the grace of bone and flesh. She shook away his touch as if it burnt. ‘You are a...a...?’

  He could not quite say it.

  ‘Whore.’ She supplied the word without compunction, the outline of her breasts so very easily seen against the candlelight. Fuller. More womanly. For a moment through the make-up and the hair dye, through the bangles and the wisp-of-nothing cloth, he completely lost the woman he had once known. ‘There are worse ways to survive, Capitán, much worse ways than you could ever know and this is my home now.’

  God. He thought he might be sick right there on the bed draped in velvet and covered in pelts of fur. The small cloth on the sideboard told of some cleansing ritual and the oil she wore was so strong it felt as if it clung to him, as well; an essence of ruin.

  ‘Why? You could have been anything or anyone and instead...’

  His hands spread across the air in front of her, expressing all that words could not.

  ‘Instead I am this.’ Narrowed eyes flickered and flattened, a rise of blood on her cheeks. ‘I have survived, Capitán. I have been made stronger by adversity. I am Madam Antonia Herrera y Salazar now, a courtesan and a different woman from the one you knew.’

  She lifted a glass to her lips, brandy by the colour, and drank all that was left, trying to dismiss him. But he could not let it go at that. He needed to know what path had brought her here to this choice of a brothel in the backstreets of one of the poorer barrios.

  ‘You had an uncle—’

  ‘Who is dead.’ She did not let him finish.

  ‘Then the ring I gave you?’

  ‘Was stolen.’ She laughed then, a deep and throaty sound. ‘I do not want you here, my lord, paying for a service I once gave you for free whilst preaching on the ways I could have saved myself. I have many customers who like the person I have become, so perhaps it is wiser that you depart. There are others here who could see to your needs and a line of waiting patrons who can most certainly attend to mine.’

  Her glance fell to the crotch of his pants and he knew that the erection there was obvious.

  ‘Girls or boys, Capitán? The Santa Maria burdel has a large and varied choice. As young as you want them, or as old.’ Her voice was hard and brittle and foreign.

  Horrified, he could only look at her. The earrings she wore were ludicrously large and made of cheap-cut glass and her breasts spilled over the edge of the thin lace, the nipples darker than he rememb
ered; in mockery and in parody. She was like some tarnished version of what she had been and he could hardly see the girl he had known in the swollen pout of her lips and the unfocused bitterness in her eyes.

  He could smell a herb in the air that he recognised and was appalled. ‘Drugs? Do you use these now, too?’

  ‘Laudanum. It relaxes the body and fortifies the soul. A useful elixir in my kind of work and I swear there are times when I simply cannot get enough of it.’

  Lewdly she spread the silk in her nightdress so that he saw the bare skin of her sex and hope drained from his face when she smiled, the red from the thickened wax she wore on her lips staining her teeth.

  He turned for the door and kept on walking.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alejandra came to in her bed, a wet cloth across her forehead and Lucien Howard gone.

  Maria was sitting there, the full light of the midday upon her. ‘You took too much of the laudanum last night, Antonia. It has that effect on one who has not tried it before. I warned you one twist of it was ample, but you took three.’

  A headache split the day into jagged pieces and she shielded her eyes from the light whilst directing Maria to pull the curtains closed.

  ‘I only took one before my...customer got here and then two more after he had left.’

  ‘Señor Morales does not look like any moneylender I have ever had dealings with. He also does not look like a man who would have the need to pay good money for a woman’s company.’

  ‘He isn’t Mateo Morales, Maria. Eloisa placed him down as such in the book of appointments and the error was not corrected.’

  ‘Who is he, then?’

  ‘A soldier. An Englishman. My lover. Once.’

  ‘And now...?’

  She turned away and let the pillows envelop her. Now she had no idea what he was to her or she to him.

  Instead you are this.

  His words. The ones that had ripped the heart out of any forgiveness or hope and she had played to his disappointment like a master, pushing him back and keeping him there.

  A thousand days of distance had shaped each of them differently and whereas once those differences had fitted them together, now they only tore them apart. In damage and in pain.

  One could only be the sum of one’s regrets and hers were many.

  Clasping at her stomach she breathed in. Their child. She had called him Ross for his father. He had been two minutes old when he took his final breath and the little grace that had still been in her had been extinguished completely. Every day since she had visited the cemetery.

  ‘I will not see Lucien Howard again.’ The anger in her tone was threaded in sorrow.

  ‘Then if he comes back, I shall say you have left the house, Antonia. An uncle in Almeida perhaps might be advisable, or a cousin in Cadiz. I have family in both places. I can give him those directions.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  * * *

  Alejandra was gone when Lucien arrived the next evening at the burdel on Segovia Street. ‘She has gone to Cadiz,’ the old lady said, and he had no reason to disbelieve her story. ‘She said to say she thought it was for the best, for both of you.’

  ‘I see. She has a place there?’

  ‘Of course. A beautiful woman is always welcome wherever she goes. It is in the nature of men to want to protect such loveliness.’

  ‘Another brothel, then? Like this one? Interchangeable?’

  ‘Antonia was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth, señor. Perhaps she enjoys the work. Or perhaps she just needs it.’

  ‘Tell her I will wait in the reading room of the library on the Paseo de Recoletos. I will be there every morning for the next month and if she would like to talk I would like to listen. Give her this. It was hers anyway.’ Taking the signet ring from his pocket, Lucien laid it on the small table to one side of the foyer.

  The old woman looked shocked as she reached for the gold ring. ‘This is yours?’

  ‘It is. I am Major Lucien Howard, the sixth Earl of Ross.’

  ‘Ross?’ His title was repeated in a strange manner, almost breathless. ‘I will make sure she receives this message, my lord. I promise it on the name of Our Lord and for her sake I hope she will come to you at the library on Recoletos.’

  ‘Can I ask you something, señora?’

  He waited until she nodded before going on.

  ‘Do the French soldiers come here, to this place?’

  ‘They do, sir. Often.’

  ‘And are you a supporter of Napoleon and his brother Joseph’s hopes for the Spanish throne?’

  The silence was telling. Spain was a dangerous place these days to confess otherwise to a stranger.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He turned towards the door and let himself out, through the garish velvet hangings and a row of poorly painted golden statues. Valour came in different ways, he suddenly thought, and he was sure Alejandra was still here in Madrid for he could feel her close. Looking back at the facade of the house, he hoped he might see movement at the windows, but there was nothing, no telling shadow or twitching curtains.

  Was El Vengador’s daughter sleeping with the enemy in order to help Spain? He imagined it highly likely as he hailed his carriage. She had been expecting another in his place, that much was sure. Señor Morales was the name she had uttered and he resolved to find out more about the man. Señor Mateo Morales perhaps, for that was the Christian name he had given for the rendezvous. For this moment she might be lost to him, but there had been something in her actions that had spoken of desperation. And sadness.

  Tristesse.

  As the horses pulled on through the busy streets of La Latina Lucien swore that he was damn well going to find out what had happened to bring her to this brothel and in a disguise that spoke of hidden danger and hardships.

  * * *

  On the fourth day after the meeting with Lucien Howard, Alejandra went to the pawnshop on Calle Preciados and got the next three months’ rent for the sale of the ring.

  It bought her another ninety days and she was not sorry to sell it for it meant nothing any more and she could no longer bear to look at such a false circle of promise.

  Lucien Howard had given the ring to Maria as a means of apology, she thought, as an ending and a way out. Guilt was there, too, probably, given all that had happened between them. Well, she would take it in the spirit it was given and the pesos realised by the gold would allow her the time to think and plan and be.

  Maria herself had been uncertain about such an action because she had fallen heavily under the spell of the English captain.

  ‘You are too stubborn, Antonia. So stubborn you no longer know what might be good for you any more. I do not understand why you will not go to the Paseo de Recoletos and at least speak with him, for he seemed a most reasonable man. I am guessing that he was the father of your child. The sixth Earl of Ross? He gave me his title.’

  ‘My child is gone. Dead and buried. If Lucien Howard had wanted to find me, he could easily have done so. I sent my address and a letter to his home in England, but he did not want contact and he wrote back to say so. It is too late now. For both of us.’

  ‘Because he thinks you a whore?’

  ‘No,’ she bit back quickly. ‘Because I am one.’

  ‘But you have never...’

  ‘I have drugged French soldiers for my own purposes. I have stolen documents and personal letters and have had no compunction at all in sending these on to those who might pay me well for them. I have taken girls into this house and set them to work in a way that I knew in my heart was wrong.’

  ‘You have always been too hard on yourself, Antonia, since you first came here four years ago.’

  ‘Because once I was not this person. Once I was better and Capitán Howard only remembers that woman.’

  ‘Does he know you have sent useful intelligence to the British army here? Does he know the girls you employ are well cared for? Does he know the streets in Madrid are
a dangerous place for the homeless and the vulnerable and the aged? So dangerous you decided to help by taking them in?’

  ‘He is an earl, Maria, an earl who has a high place in English society. I would only be a hindrance to him, a liability because I am no longer a person he could even like.’

  She did not say that her body was different, too, with the birth of Ross. A vain and vapid thing, but still it was there, lurking in the background. No longer young or beautiful. The past four years had seen to that.

  ‘Ross.’ Her child. The pain of his name spoken loud had her bending over and sitting. She would not cry. She had run out of tears years ago and Lucien Howard was as good as dead to her.

  The vanity of imagining he was here to rescue her, to love her, to take her in his arms and hold her safe was a stupid one. He had been in her room to buy the services of a whore for an hour and no amount of argument could make that different. He was married, too, though she had seen no rings upon his hands when he had visited her.

  No. She could not weather another betrayal from a man she had always thought of as honourable and her past would crucify them if she allowed a new closeness.

  It was the right thing to do this, for him and for her. She just prayed he would leave the city soon.

  * * *

  The French soldier was fast asleep and would be for some time with the help of the laudanum she had administered. Eloise, one of the younger girls, was in his bed curled around him to keep him quiet whilst she rifled through his clothes behind a curtain hung specially to one side of the room for just this purpose.

  It was so easy to catch them off guard, these boys, Alejandra thought, so simple to allow them a few indiscretions whilst toasting king and country and their hopes for an empire that would rule the civilised world.