Captain from Castile

by Samuel Shellabarger; Internet Archive

  "No," she snapped, "not about witches. I'll tell you about the little Jesus."

  "Aunty, I'd rather hear about the Witch of Jaen."

  "Shut up or I won't tell you anything. . . . Good night, all."

  She hid her heartache at the fiasco of the evening, accepted the renewed compliments of the platoon, which was breaking up for the night, and walked off with Ochoa to the improvised lean-to of branches that served as a shelter. Crawling under it, they took off their shoes in token of undressing, and were ready to stretch out on their cloaks.

  "Your prayers, little one," she reminded. "We'll say them together. Your aunty has great need to pray Nuestra Sehora for strength and forgiveness. I confess myself to you, chico. I'm a vile woman."

  ''Vive Dios!" hotly protested Ochoa in the idiom of the camp. "I'd plant my knife in any bastard that said so—"

  "Hush! You mustn't talk that way."

  "And if I'm not big enough," Ochoa went on, "there's plenty of others who are: Manuel, Captain de Vargas, the whole platoon." He threw his arms around her. "You aren't vile: you're good. Why are you sad, Tia mia, when you danced so elegantly?"

  "Be still. We must pray." They kneeled, facing each other, wath bowed heads. She covered his clasped hands with hers.

  They were not the only ones praying at that moment. Few in the camp were so abandoned that they did not commit their souls to God before sleeping, as men under the shadow of death. Hard Manuel Perez in his hut close by, Maldonado the Tough, Cervantes the Jester, Bull Garcia, became children again with folded hands.

  "Pater noster," Catana and the little boy murmured, "Qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum . . /' And when they came to the end, "Ave, Maria, gratia plena. . . . Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

  They crossed themselves and remained a moment with bowed heads. She would confess to Father Olmedo as soon as possible. She would scourge herself with knotted cords to pay for the wickedness of that love charm. Meanwhile, she felt a dawning peace.

  They crossed themselves again, and she kissed Ochoa.

  "I want a story," he insisted. "Please, a fairy tale."

  "All right, then, I'll tell you about the Sprig of Rosemary."

  He approved. "That's a nice story." But his eyes drooped.

  "En otro tiempo/' she began, keeping her voice as monotonous as possible. By the time she got to the handsome cahallero, Ochoa was fast asleep.

  With a smile, she drew his cloak around him, for the upland air had a chill in it, and then lay down at his side. The camp had grown quiet, except for random snores from various huts and the more remote tread of a sentinel.

  She stared at the vague lightness that marked the opening of the shelter. Yes, she had done well in returning the ring to Botello. But why didn't Pedro care for her? What was wrong, when he had told her that first day that she would belong to him—yes, in front of the General himself? Was she less pleasing than a year ago? Or was he bound by a vow?

  The moral scruples of a later age did not cross her mind. If they loved each other, if they could not marry, their union seemed natural to both conscience and society; even the Church looked the other way.

  But he might be fulfilling a vow or a penance. Perhaps she could find out—

  No! Dios! All at once she realized what the trouble was. Her man's clothes! The fact that she marched in the ranks. Who could love a marimacho? When he had known her in Jaen, she was suitably dressed and feminine. That must be the reason.

  Yes, a tomboy, who could take care of herself too well, who could swear and ruffle it with Maldonado himself. Repulsive to a fine gentleman like Pedro de Vargas. How could he help comparing her with Dona Luisa de Carvajal, the fashionable and exquisite? Catana wilted. Tentatively she slipped her hands to her waist, gauging its size. No stays ever made could compress her muscles to Luisa's willowy perfection. If that was it . . .

  Her eyes closed.

  She found herself beautifully dressed in yellow damask walking on Pedro's arm between two lines of glittering people. The fact that every now and then they paused to do a few steps of the saraband seemed quite natural. She carried her head high, felt the weight of her hair, which had grown long again. She was magnificent, admired. She floated rather than walked. Pedro admired her; she read it in his eyes. Then suddenly the dream broke into fragments—pointing fingers, jeering faces. Looking down, she saw beneath her brocaded bodice that the skirt was gone. She was wearing her frayed black hose and muddy shoes. "Catana!" they hissed. "Marimacho!''

  "Catana."

  She was awake with a hand on her knife. Someone had touched her. A vague, dark form blacked the entrance of the lean-to.

  "Catana."

  She would have known that whisper among a thousand, and at once her heart began racing with an excitement that was almost fear.

  "Yes, seiior."

  "Come. Bring your cloak."

  Moving quietly to keep from waking Ochoa, she crept out. To her still confused mind, it seemed part of the dream; but the arms around her felt real, and his lips were warm.

  "You were sleeping hard," he whispered. "Forgive me."

  She stood quivering, or perhaps his arms trembled a little.

  "I've made a hut for us on the edge of the camp, where we'll be alone. I have to be off before dawn, but we have a few hours. Come, I'll show you where it is. Muchacha mia!" he added still more softly.

  As they went, his arm was around her waist, drawing her close. She leaned her head sidewards on his shoulder.

  "And I used no magic," she thought. "And he cares for me. And he loves me. Dear God! He loves me."

  He was saying, "It was hard to wait. The nights have been a fever of wanting you. But not there—I knew you understood—not down there in that crowded fort, in the heat and swelter. I kept thinking of the mountains, of you and me alone—the cool night. By God, it's been worth the waiting, querida mia!"

  He stopped to kiss her, bending back her head. And loosening her doublet, he kissed her throat.

  "For our first time, it had to be in the mountains. Is it not heaven, the smell of the pines, Catana? Doesn't it recall our own sierra? It's been worth waiting for. But after tonight, always, always—"

  And she had been imagining foolish things, when for her sake, for the sake of their first night, he had bridled himself, and had withheld, as if she had been high-born, to be treated with the reverence of a cavalier for a hidalga. She flushed when she thought of the magic ring.

  "I wondered," she said, "whether these clothes—Senor, if it would please you that I made myself a dress—"

  "Why do you call me senor?" he protested. "Am I not your homhre? Are we not comrades in this venture? Why don't you call me by my name? Senor!"

  She faltered, "I've always thought of you that way. Since you used CO come out to the Rosario. It was a brave day for me, I can tell you, when you rode up on Campeador. I can't help thinking of you as lord. But if you want, I'll try to call you"—she hesitated— ''Pedro, senor."

  He stopped again to kiss her. "Queridaj whatever you call me will sound sweet."

  "I was asking about my dress."

  "Your dress?" he repeated, smoothing back the square-cut bang from her forehead. "What dress?"

  "Whether you would rather have me in shift and gown than in hose and doublet."

  "Why should I?"

  "Because I'm so rough—You're not listening."

  "Yes, I am." He slipped his arm around her again, and they walked on. "Yes, what was it you said?"

  "That I wished for some pretty clothes to please you in—a clean gown—not these slubbered tights. I would not have you too ashamed of me before the captains."

  "Ashamed!" His arm tightened. "Show me a cavalier in the army who doesn't envy me. When the gallantest high-mettled wench in the two Castiles takes me for lover, when my blood sings with pride of you, sweeting, to talk about shame? Before anyone! Por Dios, you ought to be whipped! Skirts and shifts on the march? Let me catch you
in them! Why not face cream and perfume? You're no doll and I'm no smell-smock. You're dressed to a soldier's taste. I love you as you are." He pointed his earnestness by drawing her closer. "Which doesn't mean that I won't gown you in silks and damask when the time comes, muchacha mia/'

  So she had been wrong again. Her mannish costume, frayed and patched, the labor and stains of the camp, made her, it seemed, even more desirable to him. He loved her for her very self. She walked beside him dizzy with happiness, proud of his masterfulness.

  It had come at last, the long hoped for, the often despaired of. It had come, like a lightning flash, when she least expected it. She ached with joy and a delicious apprehension.

  They followed a ledge of the hill at some distance from the main camp toward a spot where the land fell abruptly in a kind of miniature precipice. Beneath them, far and wide, the tropical lowlands spread out in the diffused moonlight, exhaling on a faint breeze the spice of their endless fruits and flowers. To the south, like a giant phantom, rose the snow-covered mass of Orizaba, and to the north the heights of the Cofre de Perote.

  "Here," said Pedro, showing a hut of pine branches which had been lopped from an overhanging tree near the edge of the precipice. They were supported by a head-high ridgepole, and the entrance between them overlooked the pale distance. "Does it please you, amada?"

  "Please me!" she echoed. "What a beautiful place, senor! It is like a fairy tale." She tilted her head back, filling her lungs with the sweet air. "What a country! I love it more than Spain."

  "Hardly that!" he smiled.

  "Yes, really. It seems as if it belonged to us more, to you and me. I can't find the words—"

  He led her through the opening of the lean-to. "I made a deep bed, Catana." He pointed to the mattress of pine twigs. "It smells sweeter than lavender. We'll lay our cloaks over it this way."

  He pressed her to him, and she could feel, without seeing it, the flame in his eyes.

  "Please," she murmured—"if you'll go out a moment, I'll call you—"

  In the moon dusk of the shelter, her face, transformed by the me-

  ment, looked like a much younger girl's. The protective hardness which eighteen years had given her seemed dissolved. Her lips were half-parted, and the shadows around her eyes were deep and soft.

  "You're beautiful, Catana," he said. "I didn't know you were so beautiful."

  Raising her hand to his lips, he lingered a moment absorbed in her; then, leaving the hut, he stood to one side where she could barely see him outlined against the sky on the edge of the ravdne.

  She undressed and, stretching out upon the cloaks, drew a part of them over her.

  "Yes," she called.

  Her heart echoed his ansvering footsteps.

  When at last he slept, with her head still in the circle of his bare arm, she lay wrapt in a content so perfect that she feared to disturb it by the least movement. She could not waste any of the wonder of tonight in sleep, the new, ineffable happiness of lying in his arms, the feel of his body against hers, the sense of her life lost in his. A content too deep to be troubled even by desire. In the full tide of youth and passion, they had given them.selves to each other fully, until desire itself had become a serene languor. If he wakened and once more possessed her, she would be content; if not, it was equal happiness to be quiet, feeling the pulse of his arm against her cheek.

  Outside, paler than the moonlight, she could see the snow-clad shoulder of the great volcano sloping beyond the doorway of the hut. Now and then a stirring of the night breeze entered like a soft caress.

  If it could only last, she thought, if morning didn't have to come! The sense of passing time, which gives happiness its sharpest poignancy, alone haunted her—time who takes back all his gifts. She was enough versed in life to know that nothing lasts, that nothing is ever repeated. Morning would come, then other mornings, drifting her farther away from the pine-branch hut and from these hours.

  The moonlight faded into darkness. Stars appeared, but they were late stars that gave a hint of dawn. It seemed to her that time quickened like a down-flowing stream. She must waken him at the first light, as he had to ride ahead of the army, and she stared fearfully toward the east; but the star-lit sky was still unbroken.

  Then suddenly a couple of bird notes sounded in the woods, and after a time others answered. She closed her ears to them. They grew louder, more insistent. A streak of gray showed along the horizon. Finally, a horse neighed.

  In her fear that he should come to blame because of her, she lifted her head at last and kissed him. He awoke slowly, felt her in his arms and drew her closer.

  "It is time, seiior/' she whispered.

  "Surely not."

  "Yes."

  "Well then, I'll steal a half hour," he answered. "I'm hungry for you, Catana—mad for you! I can never have enough."

  "Nor I—But, seiior, you should go—"

  "Bella adorada mia!"

  She yielded, felt once more the wave that canceled time sweep over them.

  Then, still languid from his embrace, she saw him in the dimness of the hut, drawing on his clothes, buckling his sword.

  "Until tonight," he said. "I shall think only of you; I shall feel your kiss on my lips. Until tonight!"

  He disappeared into the faint gray outside. Some minutes later, she heard the distant sound of hoofbeats.

  Then near and far the trumpets of reveille put an end to dreams.

  XL/I

  Don Francisco de Vargas had never been submerged nor, indeed, too much impressed by the grandeur of his wife's Italian relatives. Even when, a fugitive and exile from Spain, he reached Florence with Dona Maria, to be warmly received at the magnificent Strozzi Palace in the Via Tomabuoni, he accepted the welcome as an honored guest and not as a poor relation. The Strozzis themselves had been exiles some years before and knew the ups and downs of fortune. They knew also that a renowned soldier, the friend of the Great Captain's, and a kinsman of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, was inferior to no one. Indeed, it was a matter not only of charity but of pride to shelter so illustrious a refugee.

  After kissing Clarice de' Medici, the wife of Filippo Strozzi, and after embracing Filippo himself, Don Francisco and Doiia Maria received the condolences of their hosts with simple dignity.

  "Aye, Cousins," said the old cavalier, "it was a base affront upon your name and mine. You must help me avenge it. The death of our daughter—" But it was unfitting that this supreme grief should be

  exposed to the liveried torch-bearers in the courtyard. "No more of that tonight/' he added in his rusty Italian. And tweaking the ear of a small boy who clung to Madonna Strozzi's skirts, "Who's this for a brave young colt? Piero, eh? The name of our own son. Let's have a look at you, figliuolo. Lord bless me! A fine lad! Big bones and keen eyes! Here's one who will do you honor. Cousins." A prediction borne out by the later fame of Piero Strozzi.

  Don Francisco tossed a handful of small coins—the last in his purse —to the flunkeys in the courtyard and, offering an arm to his hostess, limped up the steps into the palace.

  There, installed in a suite of high-ceilinged, frescoed rooms, he and Dofia Maria spent most of the year that followed the flight from Spain. Through the deep-set windows, they could look out on the Duomo, which dominated Florence even more then than now; and in the other direction they could see a part of the church of Santa Trinita, where Dofia Maria's Strozzi ancestors lay buried. On pleasant days, they could stroll between palaces down to the Arno or ride for a change to the beautiful Strozzi villa, Le Selve, near Signa. At Cousin Filippo's princely table gathered the beauties and wits, the financiers, scholars, and soldiers of Tuscany. After the jog-trot life of a Spanish provincial town, like Jaen, the return to Florence was more than a little bewildering until, in Don Francisco's phrase, one got back the hang of it.

  But yet, overshadowing the Strozzi hospitality, Florentine magnificence, and even the suit for redress which was being pushed in Rome and in Spain, anxiety about Pedro
haunted the elder de Vargases day and night.

  During August, they waited confidently for his arrival and of an evening liked to make plans for his career. Should he continue on to France and to the place awaiting him in Bayard's household? Should he be trained in the brilliant court that surrounded Lorenzo de' Medici and his young French bride? Don Francisco argued for the former, Doila Maria for the latter. She had her eye on a daughter of the Valori family, with a good dowry and good looks, who was just the match for Pedro if the proper finesse and influence were used to catch her. With this in view, she cunningly urged that if Pedro was to become a soldier he could do no better than attach himself to Giovanni de' Medici of the Black Bands, a young man who was already the foremost captain in Italy.

  But August passed, and after it September. The expected arrival did not come. Plan-making languished or sounded forced. In October the unspoken questions could no longer be kept back. Had Pedro fallen in

  the mountains of Jaen? Had he perished in some other way? Had he been recaptured by the Inquisition?

  At night, in their square, canopied bed, Don Francisco would gently say, "Take heart, wife. No weeping. Now, now! All will be well." But often a tear would steal down his own lean face.

  Once when he tried to distract her by talking of their petition to the Pope, she burst out, "Why should we care, who have lost our children? I'd rather die and be with them. What does vindication matter to us now?" And he could find nothing to reply.

  It was noticed at this time that, when he considered himself alone, Don Francisco stooped and he leaned hard on his cane, though he was quick to draw himself up, underlip out and chin defiant, if he found that he was watched.

  Four months had passed since the escape from Jaen. Late autumn, cold and damp in the poorly heated, cavernous rooms of the palace, shut in, and with it despair. Excusing themselves to the com.pany below, conscious of the pity which confirmed their own fears, Sefior de Vargas and his v;ife retired early these days, and would sit for a while on either side of an ineffective olive-wood fire keeping vigil over memories.

  On one of these evenings, casually (as such things happen), a servant knocked at the door, entered, and bowed.