Hart, Mallory Dorn

by Jasmine on the Wind

  "Why cries she out so piteously about the 'cave of sin repented'?" Dolores muttered to Miguel, whose lone eye was riveted upon the sick girl as if by will alone he could cure her. "What does that mean? Do you know?"

  Miguel's hollow voice seemed to come from far away, although he sat next to her. There was resignation in his tone. "What matters it now that I should tell you of the cave? It is in my bones that my master is already dead and that his granddaughter, Doña Blanca, all who remains of the Ganavets, will die too. So..." He paused for a moment in sad contemplation, and then, with an effort, resumed. "Her father was murdered for adulterous sinning with the wife of a powerful lord in our district. His dead body was delivered to my master with the head parted from it, and so sore was my master stricken with this terrible deed that he swooned and the Devil took possession of him. And from that moment did his senses leave him.

  "He caused the body of his only son to be laid in a stone sarcophagus in a dry cave not far from the manse—and soon after he laid there his daughter-in-law too. But the head—his son's head he put in a cage of mesh and chained this to a niche where he kept a perpetual lamp burning, and there it moldered and stunk until the flesh rotted away from the skull. And there, every day, did he drag his wretched and shrinking granddaughter to stand before this terrible relict with him and pray for her father's soul. The pitiful child dreaded that cave."

  Dolores's throat constricted in disgust and pity. "Oh, poor Blanca! She never told me of this."

  "Mayhap she forgot it. She was so young. And thin, like a little stick." Miguel shrugged, his eye never leaving the muttering Blanca. "And yet, she was fortunate. My master did not like her, so in her sixth year he sent her far away, to the convent where her mother had once sheltered. She was fortunate," he repeated. "She had not to endure the follies of an old man crazed in the head most of the time, venturing not even to the church nor permitting any visitors save the notary, the one who brought to him the offer for Blanca's hand, and sometimes the priest. He cared nothing that his servants robbed him and then left him. And now there is no one save myself and a dimwitted old towns-woman who cares for him and who once warmed his bed when his body was still well."

  Dolores stared at the man's craggy profile, harsh in the flickering light of the candles. "And you? Why do you stay in so morbid a house?"

  "And where would I go, my lady?" he answered, using the address with sarcasm. "Torrejoncillo is my home, it is where I was born. And now I am old and tired, my sight is failing, with scarcely a coin to ease what days I have left. Who would give me work? Shelter? None!" he answered his own question. "At least at Torrejoncillo I have a sturdy cottage of my own and a bit of land to grow turnips and onions, and the Baron supplies me with a maravedi here and there in return for doing what I can with the place."

  Suddenly he clasped his gnarled hands and beat the air before him, and his voice trembled with anger. "That is why she dare not die, this poor female into whose weak hands will be entrusted what small portion I have. For no matter that she marry or not, she remembers me of yore, I gave her sweet cakes and rode her about on my shoulders. She will not evict me. She will not take from me all I have."

  Dolores finally understood his constant concern for Blanca's health. But she was not without sympathy, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that her own future was also in grave doubt. What would become of her should the suffering girl on the pallet give up the ghost? She would be stranded, with no purpose for continuing the journey, and with nowhere to go but back to the convent.

  Feeling miserable and forlorn, she hugged her knees to her chest. What was she doing here, alone and so far from Ciudad Real, from Carlos and Pepi, from the silly dreams that had warmed her young life at the inn, from the foolish quest to find Francisco, the brash cutpurse who had stolen her virginity and her heart and who, if he was still alive, was certainly hundreds of leagues distant from this remote province anyway? Why had she even left Santa Rosa, where at least she was safe?

  There was a thrashing from the pallet and a little shriek. "Ay, ay, help me, help me!" Blanca cried wildly. Then her voice dropped into a conversational mode. "Ora, ora pro nobis.... see now, cross the stitch to the left... little flowers... knot, knot, knot, sister... ah, no, pack up my tapestry, we shall not leave it..."

  Sighing, Dolores crawled to her, too tired to stand up. Blanca's cheeks were sunken, her eyes were open but staring, unfocused and unseeing, there was dribble coming out of her mouth. Dolores drew back the sheet and gently felt the right side of the shockingly swollen belly, but pulled back her hand immediately as Blanca jerked and screamed thinly at her touch.

  "Grandfather, grandfather, I am afraid... the cave... Holy Virgin, cut off his head he has been bad... no, no... I am repentant, I repent..." Blanca wailed, her head rolling about in distress.

  Dolores picked up the limp, hot hand with the pathetic, ragged nails and put it to her own cheek. She rocked back and forth, strands of auburn hair straggling from her felt cap to tangle on her blanketed shoulders. "Oh Blanca, Blanca," she despaired. "Oh Blanca, get well."

  At last Blanca quieted. Her eyes fluttered closed. She continued breathing heavily through her mouth, uttering only an occasional soft groan, but Dolores thought the girl's skin felt a little cooler.

  Wrapping herself up in her own blanket, Dolores finally stretched out on the hard ground as Miguel had already done, her head on her bent arm. She dropped off into an exhausted but shallow sleep so that she heard Miguel leave the hut some time later to relieve himself. She opened one eye just enough to cast a bleary look at Blanca, who now lay still, the breath whistling through her throat, and then closed it again.

  The next time she woke—somehow she knew it was hours after—she was pulled into consciousness by the movements of the restless mules. Now it was Dolores who had to answer a call of nature. Shivering in her still damp cloak she stepped outside, only to blink in astonishment at the pale blue clarity of the rainless morning. She sniffed at the pleasant little breeze rippling the big puddles and decided the water would soon reflect the cheer of a rising sun and a dry, warm day that would harden the muddy road. Perhaps they could quickly reach a healer's help for Blanca. She refused to think they might need a priest.

  A deep, long breath of the fresh, clean-washed air lifted her heart. She raised her mud-caked skirt, accomplished her mission quickly, and returned to check on Blanca, who, the Dear Lord willing, may have passed the worst of her illness during the night. She would also waken the snoring Miguel so they could be on their way, although she would have to lead the mules on foot so that Miguel could shoulder the cart from behind through the deep ruts. Her strength revived, she pushed open the crude door.

  So quietly had Blanca slipped away from them.

  She saw Miguel kneeling by the pallet, his back toward her, rocking and rocking back and forth and crying, "Jesu, Jesu, whyfor hast thou forsaken me..." Hearing Dolores's step he sobbed out to her, without turning, "She is dead. She is dead, I tell you. She breathes no more."

  Dolores gasped, feeling that she had been struck a giant blow in the chest. She ran and sank to her knees beside the pallet where lay the dead body of young Blanca de la Rocha, ashen-skinned, mouth open, and head fallen to one side like a broken doll, a plait of sweat-dulled brown hair lying loose across the thin neck where no pulse was beating.

  Burning tears sprang up and spilled from Dolores's gray eyes to roll down her cheeks as she gazed in disbelief at her lifeless friend, so lately smiling and laughing and scheming to appear more prosperous in spite of her lack of money; a shy and artless young person who had amiably shared two years of her short life with a serving maid greedy for learning. And now she was gone, like a light snuffed out, and all her little dreams and hopes and fears gone with her. Why, why? Why did God want to take poor Blanca?

  Heavy with grief and bewilderment and horror, Dolores brushed the braid back off of Blanca's neck and tucked a lifeless hand back under the sheet. In the sudden blaze of a shaft of
sunlight stabbing in from the doorway she bowed her head as she knelt there and brokenly began to intone the Latin prayer she'd heard the nuns repeat over their dead. ***

  Dolores perched, swaying, on the wooden seat as Miguel led the beasts carefully along the least rutted and muddy part of the road. They had started off again on their endless odyssey, but now with a corpse wrapped and shrouded in the back of the wagon—only the corpse was not of the Lady Blanca, she who now sat straight-backed and unblinking in the slow-moving cart, but of her servant, a wench with no relations, from far to the south.

  Dolores could still see Miguel's hand flinging the blanket over Blanca's face as they both rose from the deathbed. She could still hear Miguel's voice grating hoarsely as the tears dried on his cheeks. "Listen to me, girl. You must help the both of us," he told her, the body at his feet already dismissed. "And do not look so wretched. I have observed that you are a clever wench and you will see the merit in what I have to say.

  "Now the Baron will die without an heir, do you understand?" The old servitor who had been so diffident pushed his craggy face aggressively into hers. "His goods and his land, what is left of them, will be forfeit to his liege lord, the Marquis of Escambura, who will keep the land or sell it, but who will surely kick me out like a dog, a useless cur. And you, girl, you will no longer have a mistress, nor anywhere to go save forward to the same fate as myself, for how can you return, by yourself and penniless, two hundred leagues back to Santa Rosa. True, is it not? True, everything I have said?" Miguel impatiently shook Dolores by the shoulders to evict the blank look from her eyes.

  "Yes, yes, true," she gulped. "Yes. So then, what shall we do?" Still stunned, she was willing to let him be the leader.

  A little more kindly, then, he grasped her hand and led her away from the pathetic corpse outside, where the fresh morning air washed over her in a purifying wave. He found an old bucket leaning against the hut. It was half-filled with clean rainwater, and he offered it to her. She cupped her hands and lifted the cold water to her mouth gratefully, and when she was finished, so did he. They both splashed water on their faces. Then, upending the bucket, he made her sit on it, wet wood or not.

  "The only persons alive who could recognize Blanca de la Rocha from her childhood are myself and the Baron, he who can scarce hear or see and who is at death's mean door, if not already through it; the Prioress of Santa Rosa, too, of a certainty, and the nuns, but they are far distant and of no account. The priest who baptized Doña Blanca, the nurse who raised her—and her father before her—the servants once in my master's employ, are gone, all gone.

  "So, who is to say you are not Blanca de la Rocha, granddaughter of the Baron, inheritor of his patents and estates!" Miguel rasped fiercely into her face, his one eye blazing.

  He stopped her protest by clapping a leathery hand over her mouth. "Be quiet, estúpida, and listen. You have here all of little Blanca's effects, her clothes, her few jewels, her casket of letters and keepsakes. You have lived with her and women do prattle. You surely know enough of what she knew of her heritage to take her place, and what you do not know will be forgiven by any who may pry—a child of six years does not retain much. Attend me, girl!"

  He chucked up her chin and stepped back from her to survey her, and his greasy gray locks fell on his forehead. He was an old man in wrinkled stockings and a worn tunic but with determination written strong on his lined face. "She carried herself no more nobly than you, so I realized when you had arrayed yourself in her garments, nor did she speak more delicately. Your coloring is not far distant from hers, and whatever distance there is could be charged off to the change from child to adult."

  Speechless, Dolores shook her head.

  Miguel clasped his hands before him in a transport of passion. "All you need do is wish it and in a twinkling, 'twixt this hut and the cart over there, you can become a titled lady, si, with a title of centuries standing, barely a handful left in Spain now deemed as Baron, so my master has babbled. You have a new life to gain, girl, you, a mere common wench."

  "But... but such deception..." Dolores choked out.

  Miguel jerked his head toward the hut where lay the still, blanketed body. "Will she care, rest in peace? Will my dying master care? Will even the Good Lord, praise to His name, care, since harm is done to no one?" he croaked out. "But I am an old man who fears to die homeless in a ditch, and you are a young woman with nothing. Together we can stay alive, and where, you tell me, where is the harm? I want little. You can have all the rest, whatever there is. Just let me live out my days in peace, in my own place, that is all I ask; and that my corpse be laid there by the side of my sainted sister, under the chestnut tree we planted fifty years ago when we were children."

  Dolores's lips were stiff and white. "To be discovered in such chicanery would mean execution by the hangman, or worse, burning." She shuddered. "What do I know of you? It is clear you care not a whit for the poor mistress who shrieked and suffered away her life last night with a poison in her belly. All she meant to you was the promise of a haven for your old bones. Why should I put my trust, nay, my life, in your hands?"

  Deliberately Miguel pulled his forelock and bobbed his head in a show of subservience. "Since I am the only one who vouchsafes you, to betray you would be to betray myself. What would be my aim?" he asked.

  In spite of herself Dolores had to consider his words for a moment and finally agree. "Tis true. There would seem no purpose for betrayal, either way. But what about Doña Blanca's betrothed?"

  Miguel suddenly deflated, his shoulders sagged, and he turned his glance away from her, into the golden morning. "'Tis a problem only you may answer, whether to keep that bargain or nay. And perhaps you must marry, for the old Baron's coffers are near empty. But your lord will allow you to succor one poor old servant in his dotage. What man would not do such small bidding for a comely wife?" His voice suddenly wavered. "And say not that I cared little for her. When she was a child I carried her on my strong shoulders."

  As his voice cracked and trailed away, Dolores started and jerked around, for she thought she heard another voice, lighter and higher, whisper in her ear, "Dolores, Dolores, take my name, I bequeath it to you. Take all of my goods, they are yours. But for the love of God, dear friend, let them bury me not in that cave of horror but in the sweet ground where the petals of roses fall...."

  Of course it was only the breeze of early morning rustling through the trees behind the hut, but Dolores's grief welled up again. She lowered her head and the tears began to seep. Yes, yes, dear Blanca, I will see you safely to a peaceful bed____

  Miguel turned to peer at her with a dull, glazed eye, his hands shaking as they fingered his felt cap. His face was gray and drawn, and the man who yesterday had seemed so hale for his age now stood stooped before her. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and snuffled. Well, once a thief, always a thief, she shrugged, then thought with irony about how she was progressing in life. It was a large step from stealing a purse to stealing a name, but evidently not too large for her. In any case, she had decided. Her chin rose and her lips curved shallowly in the ghost of a smile.

  Rising from the bucket she reached out and touched the old man's hand reassuringly. "Good Miguel, pray, carry in Doña Blanca's chest—" She drew in her breath sharply. "...my chest, Miguel, so I may divest myself of this muddied costume. There is a blue gown and a rose veil I would rather wear on this fine spring day. And wrap carefully the body of my poor serving maid. We shall lay her in a box at the first village we come to and carry her to Torrejoncillo for burial."

  Miguel's one eye blazed with relief. He instantly followed along with her. "Sí, my lady, and if fortune favors us we shall soon come up on an inn to ease our hunger and a church in which to pray for this poor, dead child." He turned and shuffled toward the cart, more erect now, but paused for a moment to turn to her once again. "Do not be afraid, Doña Blanca," he said gruffly, reassuring in his turn. "There will be no problems. All will go well, you will see."


  "Only God can know that, Miguel. But, in any case, address me as Doña Blanca only when you must, in case I should forget to answer to the name." She had never cared for the name of Blanca. Her name was Dolores and always would be. She was going to find some way to retain it.

  ***

  The castle they had seen the day before grew closer and bigger, loomed over them and faded behind them. A half league further they discovered the hostel for which they had been bound. There they ate and then asked directions to whomever in the neighborhood would prepare a body for burial.

  And that melancholy task done, they went on. Dolores felt better, physically anyway. Her stomach was filled with a hot meal. Her nerves were less raw, for the swift draught of aguardiente she had upended had taken away her breath but given her back her courage. The warm sun spread its pleasant blessings upon her as she sat in the rose-veiled, stately hennin and the wide-skirted blue gown Blanca had so gaily chosen for her. In her pouch was the little key to Blanca's dowry box, as well as the short missive Santa Rosa's prioress had written to Baron de la Rocha to note the discharge of her student and the deliverance of the travel allowance into her hands.

  She willed herself not to think of the hastily knocked together pine box and its burden in the cart behind her, nor to allow the sad, bereft feelings to escape from the depths of her heart, where she had banished them. She gave herself up to the jolting of the cart and thought of Torrejoncillo, creating pretty daydreams in her head of a pampered and petted existence—something like that lived by the Alcalde's mistress—and she stroked the soft, rich velvet of her gown to help her blank out reality.

  In the few remaining days of the journey, as the mules eagerly jangled forward toward Torrejoncillo, sensing, somehow, the nearness of their own familiar domain, she almost came to believe her own inventions.