by Maria Duenas
Her words had an immediate effect on Carola. She closed her eyes and, after a few moments, nodded. A slight movement of her chin, nothing more. But that tiny signal indicated she had surrendered.
“You can let her go.”
The mixture of drugs that Edward had been absorbing into his body over years did not enter Carola’s veins. The fear of being neutralized by chemical substances did.
The miner and Soledad avoided looking at each other as she neatly returned the instruments to her pouch, and he let go of Carola’s limp body. They both knew they had just played a dreadful, underhanded trick. But there was no other way: they had no other cards to play.
Either you stop or I’ll put a stop to you, Sol had just warned her cousin’s wife. And Carola, despite her anger and desire to get even, had understood. No longer dangerous following their silent pact, she allowed herself to be led upstairs by the men. The two other women watched her climb the steps. Dignified and stiff, biting her tongue so as not to confront them again. Proud despite the tremendous blow she had just received. Sol put her arm around the shoulders of poor Paulita; overwhelmed by a mixture of dread and relief, the young woman had burst into tears. After the two men accompanied Carola to a guest bedroom and locked the door, Fatou gave orders to his servants.
“It’s better to keep her on her own, although I don’t think she’ll have another crisis. She’ll sleep soundly, and tomorrow will be perfectly relaxed,” Soledad assured them when they reappeared downstairs. “I’ll come early in the morning to see how she is.”
“You may spend the night here if you wish,” suggested Paulita in a faint voice.
“Many thanks, but we have friends waiting for us,” Soledad lied.
Still in a state of shock, neither of the Fatous insisted.
“I’ll make sure to book her passage on the next boat for the Antilles,” said Mauro. “I understand there’s a mailboat leaving quite soon. The quicker she returns home, the better.”
“Yes, the Reina de los Angeles, but that’s only in three days’ time,” said Paulita, dabbing the corner of her eye with the tip of her handkerchief. She was obviously horrified at the idea of having this time bomb beneath her roof until then. “I know, because some female friends of mine are going to San Juan.”
Antonio Fatou hesitated a few seconds, then said, “We have a ship moored in the port that has a cargo of two thousand sacks of salt. It is leaving at dawn on the day after tomorrow, in little more than twenty-four hours, heading for Santiago de Cuba and Havana.”
Mauro had to stop himself from crowing: even if she reached the Caribbean converted into salt fish, the important thing was to get that woman out of Cádiz as quickly as possible.
“The ship is supposed to take only cargo,” Fatou explained, “but in the past it also used to have a few passengers on board. I seem to remember there are a couple of small cabins with some old bunks that could be made decent. It doesn’t call in at either the Canary Islands or Puerto Rico, and so will arrive long before the mailboat.”
Soledad and Mauro contained their impulse to embrace him. What a great man Antonio Fatou was. A worthy son of the legendary Cádiz bourgeoisie, a gentleman from top to toe.
“Will she be in a fit state to . . . Perhaps she ought to see a doctor,” Paulita cautiously suggested.
“She’s as fit as a fiddle, my love. She’ll be fine from now on, you’ll see.”
They agreed to finalize everything the next day, and the Fatous accompanied them to the entrance. The two women walked in front, the men behind. Soledad kissed the young wife on both cheeks; Fatou shook Mauro Larrea’s hand and offered a heartfelt apology.
“I’m truly sorry, my friend, that I ever doubted your honor.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself about the matter,” the miner replied with shameless nerve. “You have both done more than enough by enduring this nasty business in your own house even though it doesn’t concern you in any way.”
He and Soledad took deep breaths of the sea air as the butler came out to light their way with an oil lamp.
“Good night, Genaro, and thanks for your help.”
The only response was a couple of coughs and a slight nod of the head.
They set off, seeing themselves as a pair of unscrupulous crooks walking down the deserted streets in the middle of the night. They had taken only a few steps when they heard the voice of the elderly servant behind their backs.
“Don Mauro, Señora.”
They turned to look at him.
“You’ll be well looked after in the Cuatro Naciones Inn, in Plaza de Mina. You needn’t be anxious: I’ll keep an eye on the foreigner and my master and mistress. God be with you.”
They walked on in silence, unable to squeeze so much as a drop of joy out of this bitter triumph that had left them feeling jarred, with a taste of bile in their souls.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
He leapt up when he heard a loud knocking at the door. Daylight and early morning noises were filtering in through the half-open curtains from the square.
“What’s this, Santos? Where did you spring from?”
Hardly had he said this than the events of the past two days came flooding into his mind. Starting with the latest.
They had been received at the inn with the offer of two adjoining rooms with no questions asked, and a meager meal served in a corner of the plain dining room. Cold beef. Cooked ham. A bottle of pale sherry. Bread. They said little, drank little, and hardly ate, despite the fact that they had put nothing in their stomachs since breakfast.
After climbing the stairs together, they walked along the corridor side by side, each carrying a key. When they reached the bedroom doors, both of them found it hard to get out the words “Good night.” Not being able to speak, she stepped toward him and leaned her head on his chest, burying her beautiful face between the lapels of his frock coat. She was searching for shelter, comfort, or the solidity that both of them were starting to lack and that only together, supporting one another, did they seem able to regain. He pushed his nose and mouth into her hair, breathing it in like someone drawing his very last breath. Just as he was about to embrace her, Soledad took a step back. She raised a hand to his jaw and caressed him for a brief moment. Then came the sound of her key turning in the lock. As she disappeared behind the door, Mauro felt as if he had been flayed alive.
In spite of all his accumulated weariness, he found sleep hard to come by. Perhaps because his mind was full of scenes, voices, and faces that were as violent and disturbing as a cockfight. Or possibly because his body was desperately crying out for the person who on the far side of the wall was silently stepping out of her clothes, loosening her hair around her bare, angular shoulders, and then slipping between the covers, preoccupied by the fate of a man who was not him.
To brush against her, feel her breath on him, warm himself beside her in the dark early hours. He would have given what little he now had, the fortune he once had, and whatever fate might offer him in the future, just to spend that night clinging to Soledad Montalvo. To roam over her body with his hands, to curl up between her legs and have her embrace him. To bury himself in her, hear her laughter in his ear, feel her mouth on his mouth, become lost in the folds of her body, and taste her sweetness.
Instead, he surrendered to the arms of Morpheus when the bell of the nearby San Francisco church struck half past three. And it was not yet eight o’clock when Santos Huesos came into his room and unceremoniously roused him.
“Dr. Ysasi needs you to return to Jerez.”
“What’s happened?” asked Mauro, sitting up in the untidy bed.
“The Englishman has appeared.”
“Thank God. Where has the idiot been?”
He began dressing in great haste; one foot was already in the leg of his trousers.
“Yesterday evening he was left for Don Manuel to at
tend to right outside the hospital. He’d been attacked, it seems.”
Mauro uttered a curse. “That’s all we need,” he growled.
“I’ll fetch you a pitcher of water,” said his servant. “I can see the patrón has not awakened in the best of moods this morning.”
“Wait a moment. Where is he now?”
“I think he spent the night at the doctor’s house. But I don’t know for sure, because as soon as I heard, I took it upon myself to come and look for you.”
“Was he badly wounded?”
“Only a little bit. More scared than anything.”
“What about his possessions?”
“In his attackers’ saddlebags, I guess; where else? He didn’t have a single coin on him. They even stole his hat and boots.”
“Did his documents vanish, too?”
“That would be asking a lot for me to know, wouldn’t it, patrón?”
He finally brought him the water and a towel.
“Now go and get me paper and a pen.”
“If it’s to leave a note for Doña Soledad, don’t trouble yourself.”
He looked at Santos in the mirror as he was struggling to comb his unruly hair with his hands.
“She was up much earlier than you. I met her as I came in. On her way to the Fatou house, she told me: that was where I had just been, asking after you.”
As Mauro continued dressing, he felt his pride was wounded as if a sharp nail had been driven into it. You ought to have been more alert, you fool, he told himself.
“Did you tell her about her stepson?”
“From beginning to end.”
“What did she say?”
“That you and Don Manuel should deal with him. That she would stay here and look after Doña Carola. That you should send the woman’s baggage as quickly as possible so that she could be put on board.”
“That’s fine. Let’s go.”
Santos Huesos, with his lustrous hair and the poncho over his shoulder, did not move from the spot.
“She also mentioned something else, patrón.”
“What?” Mauro asked, searching for his hat.
“That you were to send the mulatta as well.”
He found his hat in a corner on an umbrella stand.
“So?”
“So Trinidad doesn’t want to go. And her mistress promised.”
Mauro recalled the strange pact the slave girl had mentioned as she wept the day her mistress left: that if she helped Carola to escape, she in turn would grant her freedom. Knowing the Gorostiza woman as he did, he very much doubted she had the slightest intention of keeping her side of the bargain. But the innocent girl’s head had been filled with fantasies. And Santos Huesos’s as well, apparently.
Mauro turned to face him as he buttoned up his frock coat. His faithful servant, his companion in so many trials and tribulations. The quiet Indian who had come into his care when he was no more than a boy down from the mountains. And now here he was, as fierce as a stallion over Trinidad.
“Blasted women . . .”
“Forgive me for saying so, patrón, but lately you’re hardly the one to teach me lessons on that score.”
That was certainly true. Not to him or anyone else. Especially when the woman innkeeper told him on the way out that the lady had already paid their bill. The nail digging into his manly pride sank in a little deeper.
He had still not managed to recover his composure by the time they reached Jerez a few hours later and turned into Calle Francos.
“The Englishman didn’t see you, did he?”
“Not even a whisker, I swear.”
“It’s better, then, that he doesn’t see me, either.”
A coin was the answer. The one he gave to a boy idling in the street for him to go to the doctor’s house.
“Tell Don Manuel I’m waiting for him in the small tavern on the corner. And you, Santos, go and find Nicolás.”
It took Ysasi barely three minutes to appear, his brow still furrowed at the unpleasant situation he found himself in. Sitting at the table farthest from the counter, they brought each other up to date over a plate of crushed olives and two glasses of cloudy wine from the barrel. Ysasi had no need to give a complicated medical report on Alan Claydon’s state.
“He’s black-and-blue, but there’s no serious damage.”
He told him the same story as he had told Santos, but in greater detail.
“The victim of a gang of robbers of the sort that hold people up every day on the roads of southern Spain. Their mouths must have watered when they saw his magnificent English coach without even a miserable shotgun rider to protect him. The unhappy subject of Queen Victoria doesn’t yet know how things stand in our country. They robbed him of everything, coach and coachman included. They left him half-naked among the thorn bushes and cactuses at the bottom of a ravine. Fortunately, a muleteer passing by at nightfall heard him shouting for help. He only understood two words: Jerez and doctor, but Claydon managed to use gestures to describe my beard and thin frame. And the man, who knew me because some years ago I treated him for sunstroke, which by some miracle he recovered from, took pity on him and brought him to the hospital.”
“What about the documents?”
“What documents?”
“The ones Claydon was demanding Soledad sign when he had them locked in the bedroom.”
“In the same fire that the highwaymen cook their stew, I imagine. Those vandals don’t even know how to sign with their finger, so you can imagine how little they would be interested in documents written in English. Anyway, even without those papers, I’m sure Edward’s son has many other ways of accusing her. This incident might have delayed him for now, but as soon as he gets back to England he’ll find a way to counterattack.”
“So the longer it takes him to reach there, the better.”
“Yes, but the solution is not to keep him in Jerez. The best thing would be to send him back to Gibraltar; by the time he arrives, recovers, and organizes his trip to London, we’ll at least have gained a few days so that the Claydons can find refuge from him.”
By now it was midday, and the small tavern with bare beams, earthen floor, and bullfight posters on the walls was filling with customers. The voices became louder and glasses clinked. Behind the counter, two waiters with a piece of chalk behind their ear were busy pouring out glasses of wine from the neighboring wineries.
“I suppose there’s no news of the father.”
“I passed by the convent last night and went again this morning. As was to be expected, Inés refuses to see me.”
One of the waiters came to their table with two more glasses and a plate of lupine seeds, offered by yet another grateful patient. Ysasi waved his thanks to a figure in the distance.
“Soledad explained the reasons, more or less. But it doesn’t seem that the stone wall she has for her sister would change even if she were blasted with dynamite.”
“She simply decided to cut us out of her life. That’s all there is to it.”
The doctor raised his glass in a toast.
“The magnetism of the Montalvo sisters, my friend,” he said sarcastically. “They get into your bones, and there’s no way of getting them out again.”
Mauro Larrea tried to conceal his confusion by gulping down his wine.
“The same attraction that you now feel for Sol,” continued Ysasi, “I felt for Inés as a youth.”
The amber liquid burnt Mauro’s throat. Good God, Doctor.
“First she said yes, then no, then yes again, and then she rejected me once more. She thought she was in love with Edward, but it was too late. He had already made his choice.”
“Soledad told me about it.”
That grandfather would not have minded which granddaughter the Englishman chose: the only thing that mattere
d to him was to cement the commercial links with the English market as securely as possible. The old rogue.
“Afterward, when the incident with Matí happened in Doñana only a few days following Edward and Sol’s wedding, Inés begged me not to abandon her. She swore she had been wrong to lavish her affection on the man who was now her sister’s husband. She said she had been confused, that she had been carried away by a fantasy. One evening after another she poured her heart out to me on the benches of the Alameda Cristina. She promised she would come and live with me in Cádiz, or Madrid, or anywhere in the world.”
A shadow of melancholy flitted across the doctor’s dark eyes.
“I still loved her, heart and soul, but my poor wounded pride was as fierce as a bull out in the fields. And so at first I refused, but then I thought it over. When I came back to Jerez for Christmas I was ready to accept, but by then she had taken the veil. I never saw her again until two nights ago.”
Draining his glass of wine, Ysasi stood up. When he spoke again, his tone of voice had completely altered.
“I’m going to feed the Englishman and have them take Gustavo’s wife’s things to Calle de la Tornería. Let’s see if in the meantime you can come up with one of your ruses to get him out of my house so we can put an end to this wretched pantomime once and for all.”
He banged the glass back down on the table, then walked off without saying good-bye.
Half an hour later, Mauro sat down to eat with Nicolás at the Victoria Inn, the same place he had been taken to by the notary the day he arrived in Jerez, before he became caught up in this spider’s web that seemed humanly impossible to extricate himself from. He was seated with his son at the same table, by the same window.
He let Nicolás prattle on about the marvels of Paris while they shared a stuffed chicken. He would gladly have skipped the meal to dedicate himself to the endless list of emergencies he was facing: to go to the convent to see whether he had any better luck than Ysasi; decide what to do with the stepson; go back to Cádiz to make sure everything was going well at the Fatous. To plan the embarkation on the salt ship, to rush back to Soledad. All of this was threatening him like a vulture circling around a dead mule in Veracruz, and yet at the same time he was aware that he had a son whom he had not seen for five months and who demanded at least a bit of his attention.