The Jade Dragon

by Nancy Buckingham

  He helped me to my feet, and I found that I was able to walk fairly steadily to where my grandmother was sitting with Carlota on a sofa from the gold drawing room. Dona Amalia’s face was expressionless, betraying no emotion as she watched the flames consume the great house that had been her home for nearly fifty years.

  “Poor Grandmama.” I said, bending to kiss her forehead. “It must be dreadful for you to see the quinta destroyed like this.”

  She reached for my hand and pressed it. “At least we must be thankful that everyone is safe, child. And all the animals, too. The horses have been led from the stables, and my dear cats are all here.”

  I noticed the cats then, cringing in the shelter of her skirts, their eyes glowing palely in the light of the blaze. Far from being the sinister creatures they had seemed to me when I first arrived, they were pathetic in their fear as they sought their beloved mistress’s protection.

  “Perhaps it is fitting that there will no longer be a Castanheiros,” she said in a dull, flat voice. “We had come to the end. There is no future for the Milaveira family.”

  There came a curious exclamation from Carlota, a kind of rasping in the throat. I glanced at her and saw that she was shaking violently, as though in the grip of a fever.

  “What is it, Carlota?” I asked. “Are you ill?”

  “I believed that I was doing the right thing,” she said in a strained, husky whisper. “I only wanted to protect the family from danger, but instead I have brought disaster upon us.”

  “What is she saying?” my grandmother demanded of me. “She mumbles and I cannot hear her.”

  Carlota spun around to face the old lady, her eyes wild and glaring. “I took the Jade Dragon,” she sobbed. “I took it away, that is what I am saying.”

  It was as if everything around us had suddenly become hushed and still. The roaring of the flames seemed a distant sound as I watched the two women. “You, Carlota?” gasped my grandmother. “But why? In the name of heaven, why?”

  “I ... I overheard Stafford talking with Elinor and Vicencia in the Chinese salon. He spoke with such intense hatred about the Jade Dragon, saying that he wished it could vanish into thin air and never reappear. I was terrified that Stafford might try to destroy the Jade Dragon, and then what would have become of the Milaveiras? So I took it and hid it for safety. But I should never have taken the Jade Dragon out of the house. I have angered it, and this is its revenge.”

  “Where is it now?” my grandmother demanded furiously.

  “I acted for the best, madrasta, I swear that I acted for the best. I did not realize—”

  “Where is the Jade Dragon?” Dona Amalia repeated. ‘Tell me at once where you put it, Carlota. Tell me.”

  I listened with a feeling of dread in my heart. How I wished that the wretched jade figure might really have vanished forever. My grandmother was once again in the grip of all the irrational superstition and idolatry surrounding it.

  Carlota insisted miserably, “It is safe, madrasta—in the old grotto. At the top of the steps that are cut into the rock, there is a ledge high up near the roof. That’s where I hid the Jade Dragon, well out of sight.”

  “Then go now and fetch it,” my grandmother ordered. “Take one of the servants, with a lantern. Bring the Jade Dragon to me at once.”

  Carlota was too afraid to disobey the command, but as she rose to her feet, she was shaking so much that she almost fell. I was wondering whether I should offer to help her, when there was a sudden exclamation from behind us, a ringing shout of triumph. I swung around to see Vicencia standing half-concealed in the shadow of some laurel bushes. “Dona Amalia is right,” she cried. ‘The Milaveiras are finished. Your precious Jade Dragon shall go into the midst of the fire. It will be an end to all your arrogant pretensions.” With a laugh that held such madness it made me shudder, Vicencia turned from us and darted back into the bushes.

  “Elinor, go after her,” my grandmother urged me. “Stop her.” I hesitated uncertainly. I think that perhaps I half-wanted Vicencia to succeed in her destructive aim. “Please go, Elinor,” my grandmother begged, struggling to her feet. “Stop that madwoman.”

  I obeyed then, plunging through the bushes in Vicencia’s wake. I could hear two or three of the servants coming behind me, following my lead. I had often enough strolled in the gardens to be able now to know the way, but as the darkness of the trees closed in around me, I was forced to slow my steps. Twigs caught at my skirts, and trailing fronds of ivy brushed my face. Once or twice I stumbled, almost tripping over the exposed root of some tree. I still felt weak and shaky from the ordeal in my bedroom, but somehow I managed to keep going, and it wasn’t long before I reached the rocky entrance to the grotto. I halted there a moment to recover my breath. A groom from the stables had brought a candle lantern, and I took it from him. Then, fearfully, the glimmering light held out before me, I entered the dark cavern.

  “So it is you, Elinor,” came Vicencia’s voice, echoing from out of the blackness above me. “And none the worse, I see. What ill luck for me that Stafford arrived home so early. It seems he saw flames at your window as he was driving the

  trap round to the coach house. Ah well ---”

  Although I could not see her, I heard scuffling sounds and labored breathing as she clambered up toward the grotto roof. I held the lantern higher, peering into the shadowy gloom, and seemed to discern a movement.

  Vicencia called ironically, “It is thoughtful of you to provide a light, Elinor. It will help me find the Jade Dragon—and help me deliver it, too.”

  “Come down, Vicencia,” I pleaded. “Don’t you see, you’re only making things worse for yourself.” But her reply was just a mocking laugh.

  Standing there with the lantern in my hand, it came to me suddenly what Vicencia had meant by her strange words—and help me deliver it, too. The instant her searching fingers closed upon the Jade Dragon in its hiding place, she would fling it down on me.

  I dropped the lamp and backed quickly out of range. As I did so, I heard Vicencia exclaim in triumph, and I knew she had found what she sought. Then immediately her cry changed to one of terror. There was a slithering noise, a rattle of loose pebbles, and with another terrified scream, Vicencia fell. Her body thudded to the ground.

  Horror-stricken, I grasped up the lantern and moved forward, the servants crowding in behind me. The candle shed a pool of pale light where Vicencia lay upon the damp earth floor. Her body was crumpled and twisted in the stillness of death, her head flung back at a grotesque angle. Something dark showed against the white of her neck, and, bending closer, I saw that it was the Jade Dragon. She had clutched it as she fell, and the long-clawed foreleg had pierced her throat and was buried deep. Blood oozed thickly from the gaping wound.

  “Vicencia,” I whispered, knowing that it was useless, knowing she would never hear anything again.

  A pair of strong arms lifted me up and drew me away. “She is dead, Elinor,” said Stafford somberly. “It seems that the Jade Dragon has avenged us all.”

  Chapter 19

  Today I went to Miramar with Stafford. We stood together on the belvedere as we always do when we visit the quinta, remembering that first time. From behind us came the sound of builders at work, sawing wood and hammering. The sun, still warm on this tranquil October afternoon, was turning the woodland glen below us into a blaze of autumnal color, and in the distance the sea was veiled in a delicate lilac haze.

  “Grandmama will demand a full report on how the work is progressing here,” I said. “She is so very pleased about our plans, Stafford.”

  “I think she feels that to give our betrothal her blessing helps to make up for the past.”

  I hesitated a moment, then said, “Stafford, when I was talking to Grandmama yesterday, she told me something about you that I didn’t know before.”

  He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling, and I was amazed that I had once thought them chilling and severe. “I hope it wasn’t anything too damaging,
Elinor.”

  “Far from it. According to her, the Milaveiras’ creditors would have closed in immediately when my grandfather died had you not come forward as a personal guarantor. It was you and you alone, the lawyer told her, who kept them at bay.” I looked at him reflectively. “I asked Grandmama why you should have gone to such lengths, and she was strangely reticent. In the end, she told me it was a question you would have to answer for yourself.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “It seemed too cruel a blow for poor Dona Amalia to be turned out of her home in the last months of her life. I hoped to spare her that, but unhappily it didn’t work out anyway.”

  I sighed, thinking of all the lovely things that had been destroyed in that tragic, unnecessary fire. “All the same,” I said, “it seems a bitter irony that Grandmama once accused you of making far too much money out of Milaveira wines.”

  “I don’t think you should blame her too much,” he protested quickly. “I was meddling a great deal in the business affairs of the estate. With Affonso refusing to concern himself, it was vital for someone to step in. But Dona Amalia could not be expected to understand the full circumstances.”

  “How you rush to her defense,” I said with a smile. “But it’s always the same. Stafford, what is this strange affinity that binds you to my grandmother, and her to you? I have always felt it so strongly.”

  “I had every intention of telling you the whole story sometime, but perhaps I should do so now.” His eyes went past me, and he looked up at the house. “When my father bought this derelict property as a young man, Elinor, he must have imagined that one day he would bring a bride to live here. But fate decided otherwise. The woman he fell in love with, the woman who loved him in return, was not free. She was already married, a marriage of convenience that had been arranged for her by her parents.”

  I looked at Stafford in amazement. “You mean, your father and Grandmama—they loved one another?”

  He nodded. “But Dona Amalia’s sense of duty was far too strong to allow her to put love first. In the end, after much heart-searching, they decided that the only thing was for my father to go away. So he left the running of the Lisbon side of the business to his brother and concentrated on the London end.”

  “And your mother? Did he not love her?”

  “Yes, in another way, a deeply affectionate way, but theirs was an altogether different relationship. He remained unmarried until he was nearly fifty, and my mother was many years younger than he. Alas, it wasn’t to last for very long. My mother died in giving birth to me. In due course, when I grew up, I was sent out here to learn the family business. And now, with my father and my uncle both dead, I’m running it completely.”

  A few feet away a small blue tit was performing acrobatics in a tamarisk tree, seeming quite unafraid of our presence. “So I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, “that Grandmama sees in us, in our love, a kind of rebirth of that ill-fated love of long ago. Poor Grandmama. But knowing all this, Stafford, I can’t understand why she so condemned her daughter for wanting the kind of happiness she herself had missed.”

  “I don’t think she ever did, deep down in her heart. But Dona Amalia had been brought up in a very hard school that put duty above everything. So, dutifully, she accepted her husband’s judgment that their daughter, Joanneira, was a wicked, disobedient girl for refusing the ‘highly suitable’ marriage arranged for her, and running off instead with a penniless English doctor. The old conde was a hard, unyielding man, Elinor. But perhaps if that letter of your mother’s, written when you were born, had ever reached its proper destination, Dona Amalia might have stood up to her husband and demanded a reconciliation. I think she would have. But in the absence of any news, she came to believe, she preferred to believe, that her daughter was dead.” He paused, his forefinger idly tracing the pattern of the azulejos that tiled the belvedere. “I suppose that when one is old and close to death, it must be hard to admit that for half a lifetime one has been sadly in the wrong.”

  “It amazes me that Grandmama doesn’t blame Affonso more bitterly. To discover that it was he who suppressed that letter from Mama, and not my grandfather after all—how can she take it so calmly, Stafford?”

  “Remember that it was Affonso who rescued her from the fire. And then again, his confession must have come almost as a relief to Dona Amalia. It saved her from the utterly intolerable idea that it had been her husband who’d acted so despicably.”

  “Was Carlota involved too, do you think? My uncle insists not, but I can’t help wondering.”

  “It would certainly make more sense if she had been. From the very beginning of her marriage, I imagine, Carlota dreamed of the time when the glory and prestige of being mistress of the Quinta dos Castanheiros would be hers. She would see your mother, who had certain legal rights as the conde’s daughter, as a competitor. So that suppressing Joanneira’s letter and preventing a reconciliation would have been a great temptation to Carlota.”

  “I don’t suppose we shall ever know the truth of it for sure.”

  “Does it matter?” he said with a little shrug. “Carlota and Affonso are a very subdued and chastened pair these days. They realize that at last their life of grandeur is over for good and that from now on they’ll have to manage on a very reduced income, barely enough to keep the Lisbon house going. To Carlota it must seem like near poverty, and she won’t be valuing her title of Condessa very highly now that she’s no more than the wife of a minor politician—which is all that Affonso will ever be.”

  I looked out across the fertile land in the valley below us, the land that had once comprised most of the proud Milaveira demesne. Matters had been so arranged that Affonso should retain a few of the vineyards. As for the remaining thousands of hectares, it was a time of flux and change. New landowners and new ways would emerge. But the grapes would still ripen under the hot southern sun, and there would still be wine produced for shippers like Stafford to buy and sell. The sun was sinking now, dazzling us with its golden brilliance. I knew that it was time for us to leave, for we had a lengthy journey home, but I wanted to prolong the moment.

  Stafford said: “You asked me a question once, my darling, on this very spot, a question I have never answered.”

  “I need no answer now.” I protested.

  “But you shall have one just the same, so that there are no doubts in your mind. About Inesca—she has been a good friend to me, Elinor.”

  “Please.” I said uncomfortably. “Do not try to deny—”

  “I’m denying nothing. My marriage was never a success, as you know. But I remained faithful to Luzia, because I happen to believe in marriage vows and intended to keep them. Until, that is, after the birth of our child, when my wife turned away from me completely.” Stafford’s face was clouded with remembered pain. “There’s a side to a man’s nature that cries out for fulfillment, Elinor. I don’t refer only to his physical needs, but other things too—tenderness and the sympathetic companionship a woman can give. The woman I had married offered me none of these, but in Inesca I found them all.”

  “You loved her?”

  He shook his head. “No more than Inesca loved me, but there was an affectionate rapport between us. She gave herself to me with generosity, just as, more recently, after the tragedy of little Edward’s death, her friendship brought me compassion and hope.”

  “You mean that since your son died, you and Inesca have not—” But I didn’t really need Stafford to answer that, and I went on falteringly, “Do you ... do you still see her now?”

  He smiled at me, both understanding and forgiving my jealousy. “You must start reading the newspapers, Elinor. Had you done so, you would know that Inesca was married six weeks ago, to a Spaniard who’s a well-known flamenco dancer. They plan to open a restaurant in Madrid, and I certainly wish them every good fortune.”

  Reluctantly, we turned away from the view and, hand in hand, began to stroll back along the verandah. “I noticed something else in the paper the othe
r day that I meant to show you,” he said. “About Julio Gomez—it seems he has resigned from the government service and intends to teach music in Oporto.”

  “Oh. I’m glad.”

  “Glad for him, or glad that he is leaving Lisbon?”

  “To be honest, both. Julio was rather weak and foolish to connive at his sister’s scheming, but I was really quite fond of him. All the same, I’d prefer not to run the risk of encountering him in Lisbon. I don’t want to be reminded of that dreadful time—of the time when I suspected such unspeakable things about you and believed all those lies Vicencia told me—”

  I could not finish, because Stafford had cupped my face in his two hands and stopped me with a kiss. I clung to him with sudden urgency. After some moments, I said shakily, “We must go, Stafford, or Maria will be wondering what’s happened to us. I told her when we dropped her at the bakery that we’d be calling back to collect her in about two hours.”

  The shadows were lengthening as we drove through the scented lanes of Cintra. In my head the thought was singing that long before autumn came again, I would be Stafford’s wife. Ours would be a quiet wedding—on my side, Affonso and Carlota and Major and Mrs. Forrester, while Stafford would be inviting just a few close friends. We planned to spend our honeymoon in England, visiting the Carlisles, and including a trip to the Somerset village where I’d passed my childhood.