Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  Her goal was to avoid a life of common drudgery, or of living wild and coarse with Carlos in the mountains. Whatever might be squeezed from dwelling in the Baron de la Rocha's manse she would squeeze, although, without a gitana to read her signs, the Dear Lord only knew what her destiny would turn out to be. She sighed deeply. Even though it was already two years since the world fell out from under her feet, her heart still felt leaden to contemplate how alone and unprotected she was.

  Ah well, what could not be helped must be cheerfully endured, as Tía had always said. Oh, how she missed the solid presence of her fat, comforting aunt....

  She squared back her shoulders and lifted her chin, curving her lips in a smile. She reached out to pat Blanca's gloved hand. "Just think, Doña, no more matins, no more nones and complines, no more bells ringing in the night to disturb your sleep, no more Sister Oberanga to pull your nose when your embroidery stitches run crooked..."

  Blanca joined in, grudgingly, "...no more straw mattress, no more black bread, no more Latin verbs, no more thick stockings..." Her pale brown eyes lit, finally, and she finished, "...and no more meals of ugly blood puddings and chicken feet!"

  "Dances, only dances from now on." Dolores laughed. "Your grandfather will give a great feast and dance in your honor and you will at last meet your betrothed. How exciting!"

  Blanca quickly lost the small enthusiasm she had found. "My grandsire will do nothing of the sort. For one, he is dying. Nor would he, even if he were hale. He hates people. He would not spend a maravedi, even if he had any, for an entertainment."

  "But, Blanca, he paid your place in the convent these many years and sent you coins of silver on your saint's day. You must think more kindly of him. Your memories, after all, are the view of a six-year-old child. Did you ever think that now you are grown and educated mayhap he will like you better?"

  The young noblewoman was too chilled that morning to return her companion's cheerfulness. "Oh, you don't know what you are saying," she pouted. "Although you should, after all we've whispered about night after night until the candle burned out. I've told you—nay, in fact, warned you—when you said you would come north with me, that the Baron has been ill in his head since my father died. He dismissed his lumber cutters, he closed the mill and turned out the serfs, and whatever was in his coffers then has scarce been replenished. He will leave me near penniless, except for my dowry." She touched her chest, where the small key for her dowry box was suspended under her bodice. "In fact, Miguel says there is no male lackey left in attendance but him."

  "But at least your grandfather is leaving you betrothed, and to a landed knight, according to Miguel. So you will not live alone, or poorly."

  Blanca threw the serving maid who had become her friend a gloomy glance and chewed at her nail. "And who is he, this gallant knight, of whom I know nothing and who is my inferior in rank? Is he old or young, ugly as a dragon, feeble or fit? If he will accept me I suspect he stands in need of our small lands and my dowry. How would you like to be clasped in the arms of some greedy man who mayhap has already ten children by two wives he has already worn out?"

  Dolores couldn't help laughing. "Ah, you are too full of doom. He is probably most presentable and young. And at any rate, since you have not yet signed the contract you may break the betrothal if your grandfather dies."

  "I do not think that is true, Dolores." Blanca started in on another nail. "You make up the law."

  "Sí, but it is so. I heard Doña Elvira de Padilla say it. When she was ten such a thing happened to her. Her father died before the contract was signed and her mother was able to put aside the promised betrothal when a loftier hand was offered."

  "The Padillas are powerful and rich. Gold buys anyone off."

  The high front wheel of the racketing cart hit a hole in the road, and the two girls cried out as they lurched into each other. But Blanca did not let Dolores go. She clutched to her concave bosom the serving maid who had been by chance assigned to her at the convent and who had quickly become her confidante and source of strength in exchange for being allowed to read the lessons along with her.

  "I don't want to leave Santa Rosa," she wailed on Dolores's shoulder. "I will miss dear Sister Jesu-María, I will miss old Doña Elvira in spite of her foul breath, I will miss everything and everyone..." She began to sob.

  Hugging back the boney frame of her unhappy mistress, Dolores's gray eyes focused upon the distance as she gazed over Blanca's shoulder, past Miguel's back, and along the indistinct, meandering road. She knew what it was to pine for what was over. Even yet she could hardly think of Tía Esperanza or Papa or her carefree childhood at the inn without tears stinging the backs of her eyes. Sympathetically she patted Blanca's back and silently rocked her back and forth until the girl finally stopped crying.

  When they halted for their midday meal of bread and cold fowl, Dolores asked Miguel to remove a blanket from one of the chests. Then she spread it in the small space between the baggage and the bench where they sat so that when one of them was tired she could lie down and rest, albeit in a curled up position. Dolores had a feeling the trip was going to be hard on Blanca.

  "Well, at least we have this," Blanca muttered later, patting the purse which hung at her belt. "The sum Miguel brought with him would not have bought even one meal a day for the three of us."

  "Aha, you see, you knew naught of this money, and yet, there it was. Perhaps there are other pleasant surprises awaiting you when we reach Torrejoncillo." Dolores chucked her mistress under the chin like a baby.

  "Not in that house," Blanca responded with unusual vehemence. "I hate that house, it is full of demons and imps, and the roof always leaked in my chamber." A scowl disfigured her small features. Yet, as the day wore on, it began slowly to vanish as the adventure of the trip took hold of her.

  Just before dark they reached their first stopping place, an inn of not much distinction except for the promise of hot soup and a private chamber if they paid for the three other pallets in the room. They left the cart and the animals among others being sheltered, watered, and fed in the inn yard and gratefully stretched their cramped limbs before going inside. Their dress and equipage being unremarkable, they were able to take their supper at a long trestle table in the common room without any undue attention from the locals or travelers who ate with them, and in any case Miguel, who was old but still strong-appearing and unbent, kept in his belt a long, ugly knout.

  He might have worn the Baron's blazon on a tabard over his tunic, so he had informed Blanca when she sniffed at the commonplace look of their little caravan, but he had decided against it: an insignia of rank would draw the attention of all the blackguards in Castile and Extremadura to their defenseless little party.

  After supping, the girls went directly to their pallets. They barred the door, said their prayers, exchanged a few words about still feeling the rocking motion of the cart when they closed their eyes, and quickly fell into a weary sleep, as they would every night of their bone-rattling journey to the northwest.

  In some overcrowded hostels they were forced to share a pallet between them. In some the chamber stunk and lacked a window, or offered such abundant vermin that they preferred to doze on the benches of the common room, watched over by a nodding Miguel. Ofttimes, retreating from the stinking horror of a filthy and rotting latrine, they chose to use the shelter of the bushes along the road. And sometimes, if their route took them through a larger town, they were lucky and they found an inn offering good fare and decent accommodation—the knowledgeable innkeeper's daughter grateful for the landlord's humanity in spending some of his profits on the comfort of his guests.

  They traveled as fast as was practicable over the badly marked roads, almost alone as they climbed and descended through mountain passes, other times sharing the flatter stretches with carts, mounted riders, herds of sheep or goats, and wayfarers on foot, or pulling aside to let pass the goods-laden caravans of merchants or wealthy persons moving their entire households
between residences. They happily followed these long progressions, which included well-armed guards whose power to deter the numerous brigands preying on travelers rubbed off on all who accompanied them as well.

  In their prayers every night they thanked God that the highwaymen had not noticed them and that the season of heavy rains seemed to be over; the roads were drying out and what might have been seas of mud at least held firm enough for their cart to pass. Although it remained chill, the revivifying smell of spring came on the wind. The trees held tiny April buds, and the sun often shone for several days at a time before clouds again masked the sky over the forests and fields they trundled past.

  Dolores was impressed by Miguel's devotion to Blanca, whom, after all, he had not seen in eight years. He insisted his charge wrap her warm cloak around her angular body on cold mornings and peeped from the corner of his eyes when they supped to see if she ate hearty, which she never did anyway, usually giving Dolores part of the choicest portion of her meal because she just couldn't finish it. Miguel's one good eye blinked anxiously at Blanca's merest sneeze. If the place where they stopped the cart was muddy, the strong old man insisted on conveying Blanca pig-a-back until the ground was dryer for her to walk on, leaving Dolores, of course, to lift her serge skirt and squish along as best she could in the wooden clogs she wore over her shoes.

  He said little. Most of what Dolores knew of him was from Blanca; that generations of his family had been in the de la Rochas' employ and that Miguel was already fifty years in service to the old Baron. And that he was all that remained to the household.

  The best part of the trip was when they bumped through some of the larger towns to save the distance of going around. The noise and bustle in the main squares, the bumptious but colorfully dressed city dwellers hurrying on their endless errands, the loiterers, beggars, and peddlers, the riders and conveyances winding through the littered, cobbled streets, all these gave their eyes welcome relief from the tedious fields and quiet vistas of the road.

  But after more than a fortnight had passed, the hard journey began to seem endless. Their spirits started to sag badly, so badly that when they finally crossed the Tagus River and reached Santanander—which meant that more than three-quarters of their journey had been accomplished —Blanca called a celebration and had Miguel ask directions to the very finest inn in the city, where they could lift up their weary bodies and souls, and hang the expense.

  The girls reveled in a well-swept chamber with a glowing brazier to combat the damp and a real bed to spread their sheets on, not caring at all that the mattress was husk-filled. Sturdy boys carried in a double tub—one bath for both as a concession to their dwindling funds—filled it with buckets of hot water, and supplied a huge, flannel towel for their use.

  Peeling off their stained garments, the two of them stepped gingerly into the wooden, iron-ringed tub. They squealed at the temperature of the water, but they lowered themselves an inch of skin at a time until finally they got used to the heat and sat, facing each other, groaning with pleasure. They washed themselves with a rough cloth and coarse soap, but neither could remember a luxury so welcome as this liquid warmth that drew the dirt off their skins and melted the fatigue from their bones.

  "Turn about, I'll scrub your back for you," Dolores offered. "All the saints in Heaven, this water has turned black as a witch's dug."

  Blanca looked askance. "And where did you learn that curse?"

  Dolores made a silly twist with her mouth. "From Sister Sidonia," she joked, chuckling at the very thought of the gentle nun swearing. She had never elaborated to the naive Blanca on how colorful her past had really been at Papa el Mono's.

  "I think we carried half the country along with us on our bodies," Blanca vowed, splashing water to wash off the soap. "Already I feel a hundredweight lighter." Gleaming between her small, wet breasts hung the dowry box key— the precious box with the ten silver excellentes—one thousand maravedis!—which her father had set aside to attract a good husband for her. The key was her talisman. She never took it off.

  They had just dried themselves and donned flannel chemises when a wheezing woman brought bread and a stew of lamb and barley on a tray, along with an earthenware carafe of red wine. Famished, they fell upon the hearty fare with a will.

  Dolores was scraping the last delicious morsels from her bowl when she caught Blanca's brown eyes on her speculatively and a somewhat sly expression resting on the ordinarily guileless face. She tossed back the still damp strands of auburn hair from her cheeks and tilted her head. Her stomach was filled, her body laundered, her face felt clean and glowing from the heat of the bath, and she was relaxed. "Well," she drawled. "Well, what? You are thinking something."

  Blanca felt good. "Sí, indeed I am, and I have been thinking it for a while. You would be surprised," she teased.

  "Is it sinful?" Dolores grinned. "Shall we put a blindfold on your eyes so you cannot see and daydream about the young men where they bulge fore and aft in their shameful, tiny-skirted doublets?"

  " 'Tis not I who looks, 'tis you," Blanca protested, a blush heating her pale cheeks nevertheless. "I've seen you often stare at them, both coming and going, and you smiled secretly when you thought no one was looking." She giggled and wagged a raw-bitten finger under Dolores's nose. "You cannot fool me. From how you act I know you have already had a man, although you say not. No virgin directs her gaze so unerringly at a codpiece as do you." The eager eyes opened wide, coaxing. "Now come on, confess. Do we not tell each other everything?"

  Dolores laughed and shrugged casually. "He was not a man, he was a boy..." she admitted, for the trip had thrown them so closely together there was hardly a secret or yearning they had not revealed to each other, "although he did a man's job," she added, wickedly. But she wanted to make light of it, for she still couldn't share either the brief delight or the heartbreak of Francho with anyone.

  Still, it was a relief to speak, however lightly and irreverently, of sexual ardor, the vivid memory of which invaded her dreams, sleeping or waking, with an emotion so sweet and so longing that it made her body quiver and her heart want to leap from her breast, and sometimes woke her in her bed, panting and moist. But to reveal, even to Blanca, the real strength of the love that still bound her to a youth long disappeared from her life, whose bluest eyes and dark curls overlay the face of every swaggering young man who from the distance looked even remotely like him, was embarrassing. And so she made light of it, the most beautiful experience of her whole life.

  But Blanca didn't want to believe her anyhow, because to Blanca the awesome, reportedly painful experience of lying with a lover was nothing anyone would laugh at, nor did she care to think her serving maid had more experience of life than she, year older or not. "You lie," she chided her companion. "You saw no men at the convent. And before that you were a mere child and told me you had a loving aunt who guarded you. It's more that you would like to hug and kiss and... and warm your backside in winter against somebody warm and strong."

  "Well, wouldn't you?" Dolores grinned, seeing the yearning in Blanca's soft eyes.

  "Yes!" Blanca blushed, and the ring of their joined, girlish laughter bounced from the wood-beamed ceiling.

  "But, this is what I was really thinking," Blanca finally continued, as they wiped their eyes. "I have no idea who this monster may be, to whom I am betrothed, or maybe"— she bit her lip wistfully—"he will even be a gallant, and handsome. But no matter which, I don't wish to appear a poor mouse creeping home to marry him and flee my dreary life, lest he feel my low estate and lack of family entitled him to mistreat me. It would be better if I could show more wealth. But since that is not possible, I could at least emphasize my rank as heiress to a barony. I mean, appear more important? More elegant?" Blanca groped to express her meaning.

  "A fine ambition, my lady, and you are right. But how? An elegant dame rides on a richly bedecked mare."

  "True. And so shall I," Blanca stated, finally allowing her inspiration to
light her face.

  "An elegant dame has ladies in attendance. And you have none." Dolores continued to tick off what requirements she knew of social standing.

  Blanca clapped her hands gleefully. "Ah, but I do, indeed!"

  "You are addled. Who?"

  "You!" Blanca cried, smiling broadly. Dolores's dark-fringed eyes flew wide. "See, Dolores, you have followed all my studies with me, you have skill in ciphering and spelling and reading of Latin and poetry, and you have even practiced with me the steps of the galliard and the pavane Doña Elvira taught me. You are comely, you bear yourself well, and you have not the look of a commoner. See, we are about the same height. I will give you a gown and a hat and there, you will be a lady."

  Although she had to close her mouth and gulp, Dolores didn't waste time with false modesty. The fact was, she had always believed that the angel who parceled out children bent too low when he had distributed her. But her foolish yearnings, her formless plotting to raise herself up, were really just that—vague dreams on the periphery of reality— and here was Doña Blanca, in one moment and out of thin air, creating her a lady. She hesitated not a whit to grab the offer, empty of real meaning as she knew it was since she could be a lady only as long as Blanca allowed it.

  Still she cried out gaily, "But I must have a name. And a past."

  "And so we will devise one," Blanca agreed. "Yes, yes, you can be from the south, Andalusia somewhere, for no one in Torrejoncillo will have the least idea of southern families." Blanca jumped up excitedly and ran barefoot to the one chest Miguel had carried up, rummaging among the layers of clothing. Her silky brown hair, let loose to dry, rippled and gleamed in the candlelight.

  "I know just which gown I will give you, ah, this one, the deep blue one with the square-cut, low neck—it was never becoming to me anyhow—and my third-best hat from which we shall drape this rose veil, and, let me see..." She drew out her small jewelry casket. "... the enamel locket with the black ribbon, that shall be yours." With breathless enthusiasm she ran back and pulled Dolores toward the little pile she had made and urged, "Put them on, put them on. I'll help you drape the veil."