by Maria Duenas
“And asked them to take him straight to England.”
“In a sherry ship loaded with wine to the gunwhales. They agreed to meet again at five this morning.”
“Damned bad luck.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.”
You fool, he said to himself. How could you have suggested to the doctor that he accompany the stepson to a public place in a city where there were so many of his countrymen? Obsessed as he had been with making sure Carola Gorostiza boarded her ship, distracted as he was by the possible imminent sale of his properties and by Nicolás’s exasperating decisions, he had overlooked this detail. And now it had become a huge blunder.
They were standing in the semidarkness of the square that had once been the garden of the San Francisco convent, talking in low voices with the collars of their capes turned up, beneath an iron framework covered in bougainvilleas no longer in flower.
“These Englishmen are not simply wine merchants who happened to be passing through. They are well established and have good contacts here,” Ysasi went on. “They knew Edward Claydon and do business in the same circles. So as they travel to Great Britain together, they will have more than enough time to hear all that Alan wishes to tell them, and for him to spread his lies.”
“Good evening to you.”
Mauro’s skin prickled when he heard this female voice a few steps away. Soledad was coming up behind them, wrapped in her velvet cloak, the quick tapping of her feet resounding in the square. She seemed determined and concerned, and had brought Antonio Fatou with her. They greeted one another briefly and quietly, not moving from the shady garden. This was probably the safest place. Or the least compromising.
As soon as she was beside him, Mauro could make out traces of the bitter tears she had shed. Hearing the terrible confessions that Carola Gorostiza had made about her cousin Gustavo had demolished at a stroke the elaborate edifice her family had constructed on the foundations of a cruel, unjust version of reality. It could not have been easy for her to accept the disturbing truth more than twenty years later. But life goes on, Soledad seemed to be telling him in a fleeting, silent exchange. Pain and remorse cannot hold me back now, Mauro; the moment will come when I have to deal with them. For now, I have to go on.
An almost imperceptible nod showed his agreement, but he seemed to be wondering what Fatou was doing there, since they’d already caused him enough trouble. She reassured him, arching an eyebrow, and he understood that if she had brought him with her, there must be a good reason.
The doctor explained the problem to her in a few short phrases.
“This means our plans are useless,” murmured Sol.
What plans? thought Mauro. During the tumultuous day they had just experienced, they had never once had the chance to plan anything.
Now Fatou spoke, and what he said explained his presence among them.
“Forgive my interfering in other people’s business, but Señora Claydon explained her family’s unfortunate situation to me. In order to help resolve it, I offered her the possible solution of sending her stepson in a coastal cargo boat as far as Gibraltar. But that is only scheduled to leave the day after tomorrow.”
So that’s why you’re here, my dear friend Antonio, the miner said to himself with a wry grin. You, too, have blood in your veins, and have also been ensnared by our Soledad. She had forged ahead, as ever: the last of the Montalvos never wasted a second. Mauro Larrea now understood why she had spent the whole day in Cádiz. To test Fatou, subtly persuade him, seduce him as she had done Mauro himself. To make sure the trader was on her side. With the sole aim of sealing Alan Claydon’s fate, along with her own and her husband’s. Naturally.
The silence was augmented among the date palms and magnolia trees lining the square. They heard the night watchman with his pole and lantern call out “a quarter to twelve” at one side of the square. Huddled together, four minds struggled in vain to find an answer.
“I’m afraid this is slipping through our fingers,” Ysasi concluded with his habitual tendency of always seeing the glass as half-empty.
“Of course it isn’t,” Sol insisted.
The head emerging from the folds of an elegant Parisian cloak had just made a decision.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
What followed was complete upheaval. The sound of hurried footsteps, orders being given, a stream of misgivings and doubt. Perhaps they were making a huge mistake, or perhaps this was the most audacious way of removing Alan Claydon from the scene for a while. In any case, the approaching dawn was breathing down their necks like a hungry beast, and if they didn’t make haste, Bristol would win the day.
They instantly decided who would carry out which tasks and functions. In Calle de la Verónica, Paulita was told to pack a small travel bag with a few items of men’s clothing. Four trustworthy sailors were dragged fresh from their beds; old Genaro made up a few extra food parcels. The clock had barely struck one when the doctor returned to the inn.
“Be so kind as to rouse the gentleman in room six, if you please.”
The attendant gazed at him with sleepy eyes.
“I was told four thirty, sir.”
“Pretend that is the hour that has just sounded,” said Ysasi, slipping a coin over the counter. He was sure that Claydon had no way of knowing exactly what time it was; luckily for them, his fob was the first thing the brigands had fleeced him of.
Minutes later, the stepson emerged into the central courtyard, both thumbs bandaged and a cut on his cheek. His usually clean-shaven, well-groomed face was now showing the strain of a day spent at the bottom of a ravine, with clear signs of the humiliation he had suffered in this fanatical, extravagant, southern land, one of whose daughters, much to his vexation, his father had decided to wed. Everything that had befallen him during his brief stay in Spain had been crazy, brutal, violent: the presumed lover of his stepmother bursting into his father’s room, the Indian calmly breaking both his thumbs, the assault by highwaymen who had stripped him of everything but his name. The pace at which Ysasi saw him approach betrayed his eagerness to leave that wretched country.
However, he frowned when he saw no sign of the merchants from Bristol.
The doctor reassured him. They had gone on ahead to the docks to sort out a few final details, he said in the faltering English he had learned from the Montalvos’ governesses. A glimmer of suspicion appeared on Alan Claydon’s face, but the doctor parried before he could give it a second thought.
“Come on, my friend.”
They had decided that Ysasi and Fatou alone would accompany him. The doctor was key to the plan, for he had earned Claydon’s trust. As for the young heir to the shipping company, hypnotized by Soledad’s ineffable charms, he had resolved to side with her come what might, despite the many arguments proffered by both his wife and his own common sense.
Two moored boats awaited them at the quayside, each with a pair of sailors at the oars; all of them wondering what had possessed Master Antonio to offer them a silver coin each for rowing out to sea at this hour. Obviously Fatou did not introduce himself by name to the young Claydon but behaved in a convincing manner, addressing the newcomer in English, the language he used daily in conducting his business transporting goods from the Iberian Peninsula to Britain. A throwaway observation about the nonexistent changing winds, or an unlikely morning mist, a couple of allusions to the gentlemen from Bristol who had supposedly already left to join the sherry ship anchored in the bay, and the urgent need for Mr. Claydon to accompany them immediately. A parting handshake, a thank-you here, a thank-you there. With no time to express any doubts or to change his mind, the stepson installed himself as best he could in the tiny boat. The dark night did not prevent them from seeing the unease on his face when the mooring rope was untied. Ysasi and Fatou contemplated him from the quayside as the oarsmen began to row. God be with you, my friend. May you have a sa
fe voyage.
They gave him a few minutes so as not to spoil the crossing out to the vessel. They were sending him to the Antilles, without hesitating and without his knowledge. To a crowded, hot, troubled, pulsating Caribbean island, where the Englishman would be treated as an unwanted intruder and from which, with no money or contacts, they were sure it would take him an eternity to find a way out. When they reckoned he was at a safe distance, the remainder of the company emerged from the mist to complete the performance. Genaro, the butler, and a young house servant loaded the provisions onto the second boat: water barrels, food, mattresses, blankets, an oil lamp. Soledad joined Manuel Ysasi and Fatou to exchange last thoughts, while Mauro Larrea ordered Santos Huesos to come over to a canvas awning near the seawall.
“Just a minute, patrón, let me finish helping.”
“Come here, we haven’t a moment to lose.”
He approached, a sack of beans on his back.
“You’re going with them.”
Santos Huesos let the bundle fall to the ground, taken aback.
“I don’t trust that Englishman an inch,” said Mauro.
“Are you really asking me to go back to Cuba without you?”
His mainstay, his place in the world, and the impetus behind everything he did. This was the significance of the man who had plucked him from the depths of the silver mines that had claimed him out of pure necessity when he was little more than a slippery kid, a sack of bones inside a coppery body.
“I want you by that sonofabitch’s side during the entire crossing; don’t let him out of your sight,” he continued, grasping Santos Huesos by the shoulders. “Attend him as best as you can, and try to steer him clear of that Gorostiza woman. If they exchange conversation, which I doubt, as neither of them speaks the other’s language, stick to him like glue, do you hear?”
Santos Huesos nodded, dumbfounded.
“Once you dock in Havana,” he went on without pausing for breath, “you must take Trinidad and disappear, so that they can’t find you. Calafat will tell you where to go. Deliver this letter to him the moment you arrive.”
I beg you, my dear friend, to protect my servant and the freed slave girl by giving them refuge outside the city. I will let you know my whereabouts in due course and will recompense you accordingly for the favor, the letter said. He had ended the brief missive with an ironical reference, which he knew the old banker would appreciate. With thanks in advance from your Spanish protégé.
“Take this as well,” he added.
The last of his money, which he had been keeping at Fatou’s house: now he would need to sell his inherited properties quickly, otherwise he would be forced to eat into the countess’s capital.
“This is yours,” he said, thrusting the bag into Santos Huesos’s midriff. The servant remained speechless. “Use it wisely, as there’s no more. And take care while on board: Don’t let that fire in your loins get us into any more trouble. Afterward, make your own life, wherever you wish. You know you will always have a place by my side, although I’ll understand if you decide to stay in the Caribbean.”
Something trickled down the Chichimec Indian’s face beneath the crescent moon.
“Don’t go sentimental on me, lad,” Larrea warned him, with a forced guffaw aimed at relieving the shared instant of emotion. “I’ve never seen a man from the San Miguelito sierra shed even half a tear; don’t be the first.”
Their embrace was as brief as it was sincere. Off with you now; get on the boat. Stay alert, and don’t lose heart. Take care of yourself. And of her.
He wheeled around as soon as he heard the splash of oars, preferring not to contemplate the anguish, immense as the sky, on the face of the lad who had grown into a man under his tutelage as, rocked by the black waters, he sailed toward the anchored vessel. It had been bad enough to watch Nicolás walk away from him earlier that day; he had no wish to receive another blow to the heart.
The group set off in silence toward Calle de la Verónica, each struggling with his or her conscience over the outrage they had just committed. As they reached the entrance to Calle del Correo, Soledad slackened her pace and plucked something from the folds of her dress.
“These two letters arrived this morning: Paulita asked me to give them to you in case she didn’t see you.”
Pausing for a moment beneath the light of a streetlamp, he made out the tattered appearance of the two envelopes that had crossed valleys, mountains, islands, and seas to reach him. One bore the familiar writing of his agent, Andrade. The other, the faded return address of Tadeo Carrús.
He thrust the one from Carrús in his pocket, then broke the seal of the other without hesitation. It dated from a month earlier.
After a day and a half of difficult labor, wrote Andrade, your daughter, Mariana, gave birth to a healthy baby girl who inherited her grandfather’s strength, judging by her lungs. Despite the mother-in-law’s stubborn insistence, Mariana refused to call her Úrsula. The girl will be named Elvira, after her grandmother. God bless them and you, my brother, wherever you may be.
Mauro gazed up at the stars. Children departing, and the children of children arriving: the cycle of life, nearly always incomplete, nearly always accidental. For the first time in many years, Mauro Larrea felt a foolish desire to cry.
“Is everything all right?” a voice beside him asked.
A weightless hand rested on his arm, melting away his unease as he returned to the reality of the port city, to the only thing he could be sure of now that his last defenses had fallen.
This time he was incapable of containing himself. Seizing her by the wrist, he led her around a corner, where no one would see them should they turn to look, wondering where the devil they were. He cupped her face in his big, rough hands, slid his fingers down her slender neck, then drew her close. With a primitive hunger, he pressed his lips against those of Soledad Montalvo in a sublime kiss, to which she yielded willingly. A kiss that contained all the desire accumulated over those past days, all the dreadful anguish suffocating his soul, and all the relief in the world, for among all the calamities that dogged him, one thing at least had turned out well.
They went on embracing, protected by the early morning mist and the shadow of the bell tower of the San Agustín church, enveloped by the scent of the sea, leaning up against the stone wall of one of the many buildings. With uninhibited, passionate abandon; clinging to each other like two castaways beneath the towers and rooftops of a city foreign to them both, flouting all rules of public decency. The dignified, cosmopolitan, married lady from Jerez and the returned adventurer whom the wind had carried across the sea, entwined beneath the light of streetlamps, as if she were a simple, unattached woman and he a rough, indomitable miner, unfettered by fears or armor of any kind. Pure desire, pure hunger from within. Pure skin, pure heat, flesh, breath.
His hungry mouth roamed over Soledad’s neck until he found the soft haven of her shoulder beneath the cape. Uttering her name in a hoarse voice, he longed to rest there without end, feeling the immediacy of her whole body, and her heart, entwined in his.
A few steps away, out of sight, they heard Genaro’s rasping cough, alerting them that he had been sent to look for them.
Her slender fingers stopped caressing his jaw, already covered with stubble at that late hour.
“They’re waiting for us,” she whispered in his ear.
But he knew this wasn’t true. There was no one, nothing waiting for him anywhere. The only place in the world where he longed to remain was in Sol Claydon’s embrace.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Despite their fatigue, none of them managed to fall asleep during the return journey to Jerez. Soledad rested her head against the side of the carriage, eyes closed as she was rocked by the jolting of the wheels over the bumps and dips in the road. Next to her, Mauro Larrea tried in vain to rally his thoughts in a logical way. Betwee
n them, beneath the folds of her skirts and shielded by darkness, two hands were clasped together, like converts to a private faith, while outside, beyond the windows, the world was clouded and gray.
Sitting opposite them was Manuel Ysasi, severe beneath his black beard and his endless burden of impenetrable thoughts.
They expected to reach Jerez by dawn, when the city was still rubbing the sleep from its eyes, preparing for what might have been a morning like any other: domestic servants entering the grand houses, laborers leaving for the fields or vineyards; pealing church bells; mules and carts setting off on their working day. Less than half a league from this anticipated hustle and bustle, the promise of a routine day had already vanished.
Protected inside the carriage behind the oilcloth curtains, they were oblivious to the furious approach of hooves, nor did they see the face of the rider crossing in front of them. Only when the horses abruptly slowed their pace did they sense that something was wrong and draw back the curtains to try to see out. Mauro Larrea opened the door. Amid clouds of dust, whinnying horses, and general confusion, he recognized an incongruous figure sitting astride the newly arrived steed.
He leapt out of the carriage, slamming the door behind him, shielding Soledad and the doctor from whatever he was about to hear from Nicolás’s lips.
“The convent.”
The youth gestured toward the north. A plume of smoke the color of rat’s fur was rising above the rooftops of Jerez.
Soledad opened the carriage door.
“May I ask what’s going on . . . ?” she said, descending nimbly by herself.
Observing the stony expressions of Mauro and his son, she turned her head in the direction they were gazing. Her face froze in an anguished grimace, even as the fingers that before had clasped his in a warm embrace now dug into his arm.
“Edward,” she murmured.
He had no choice but to nod.
A few moments of tense silence passed before the doctor, who had also stepped out of the carriage and realized what was happening, began to fire questions. When? Where? How?