Текст книги "Portuguese Affair"

Автор книги: Ann Swinfen

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

To reach the da Rocas’ farm by the quickest way, I took the half remembered path through the forest of Buçaco. As I child I had loved the forest, a place which always seemed to me an enchanted realm, full of mystery. I knew that it had become the custom, in our Prince Henry’s time, for his expeditions to strange foreign parts – to West and East Africa, to the lands of Arabia, to India and the spice islands far to the east, and later still to Brazil – to bring back saplings of exotic trees and to plant them here, in the native forest of Buçaco. So now our indigenous species of pine and holm oak and lesser trees were interspersed with these strange trees whose names I did not know, but which seemed to carry with them the cries of parrots and birds of paradise, the screams of monkeys leaping amongst their branches, cold-eyed snakes coiled about their feet, and predatory tigers lurking behind their trunks. In the century and more they had stood here, many of them had seeded young descendents, so that a great matriarchal tree would be surrounded by a cluster of daughters and handmaidens.

Although I had set off in haste from my grandparents’ home, the forest, as always, filled me with a sense of awe, so that I slowed my horse first to a walk, and then stopped under a tunnel formed by unimaginable trees whose trunks soared far above my head, and whose branches met and intertwined in the mysterious green light. My grandfather had told us this was a holy place, where monks and hermits had lived in times past, but secretly I had disagreed. To me it breathed an air much more ancient. It was a place where myth was born, a forest from Homer or Vergil, or from the strange jumbled folk tales our nurse used to tell us. Arthur’s knights might have ridden here, but in my imagination they were not the sanctified and cleansed knights of French chansons. They were primaeval. Demi-gods amongst mortal men, who haunted such places as the forest of Buçaco still. Even now, I could not rid myself of these feelings. I dared not turn my head, for I could sense them breathing behind me.

I dismounted. There was a stream beside the path, running cold and pure down from the higher mountainside and murmuring over its stony bed with a sweet and musical note, like some voice out of those ancient tales. I led the horse over to drink from it and, pulling off my cap, plunged my head into the water. I gasped with the shock, for despite the heat of the day, the stream ran icy cold, having sprung from deep under ground. This was what I needed. A moment of chill clarity to gather my thoughts. I sat down on the bank and flung my wet hair dripping on to my shoulders.

Both my grandparents were dead. The cruel truth of it confronted me. I had clung to the hope that I would find them there, the beloved home unchanged, their arms held out to embrace me, just as they had been when I was a little girl. And even as recently as three weeks ago my grandfather had still been there. The thought of that was almost too much to bear. I laid my forehead on my up-drawn knees and at last allowed myself to weep.

I do not know how long I sat their, hugging my grief, while the horse tugged at a few sparse tussocks of grass amongst the tree roots. At last I drew breath. I rubbed my face with my sleeve and tried to gather my thoughts. There was still Isabel. My little sister would be seventeen now, but I could not understand why she was still at the farm, instead of living with our grandfather at the manor house. Unless the Inquisition was still active in this area, seeking out any person tainted with Jewish blood despite being converted Christians, so that my grandfather had thought it was safer for her to remain there with the da Rocas. But would he not have sought a good marriage for her by now? Perhaps he had been so overwhelmed by grief at my grandmother’s death, that he had become senile. Nay, that made no sense. It was clear that the estate was in good order, the farmland cared for, the house immaculate, and the servants – though frightened by what had happened – were still carrying on with their duties. My grandfather had ridden on business to Lisbon, the servant had said. That did not suggest a man overwhelmed by age or infirmity of body or mind. And now he was gone. Who would inherit the estate now? Surely, it would be Isabel, for he could not have known whether my parents and I were alive or dead..

I must talk to Isabel. I had come hoping to take her back to England, to join my father and me in London, but if she was heiress to this great estate, surely Dom Antonio would ensure that she took her place amongst the Portuguese aristocracy, if that was what she chose. The Spanish Inquisition would have no power in a Portugal ruled by a half-Jewish king. Aye, she might choose to remain here, however sorry I would be to lose her again.

I caught the horse and mounted once more. I had delayed too long, time was passing. I must hurry on to the farm and discuss these matters with my sister. I did not even know whether word had been sent to her about our grandfather’s death at the hands of the Spanish authorities in Lisbon, since the news had only reached the manor yesterday. I should have asked the servant, but I had been too stunned by what he had told me to gather my thoughts.

My horse and I picked our way along the path, heavy with the forest’s sun-warmed spicy aromas, stirred up by his hooves amongst the leaf litter of centuries. At last the trees thinned and we emerged into the open again, where the heat struck me like a blow. I found myself looking down over a shallow valley, cleared of trees, where the tenant farm stood. Here in the north of Portugal, expensive whitewash is reserved for churches and the homes of the wealthy. Common houses are grey stone, schist or granite, and sink into the setting of the surrounding rocks. Down below me I could see such a house, huddled low amongst its barns and outbuildings.

Despite my sorrow at the loss of my grandparents, my heart suddenly lifted at the thought that I would soon see my sister again. Isabel and I had always been close as children, friends as much as sisters. She had not possessed my passion for learning, but she had loved the countryside as I did. All three of us, Isabel and Felipe and I, had swum and ridden and played about the solar with a freedom not often granted to children of our class, certainly not to girls. I had never thought, as a child, to wonder why. Indeed, it was only now, looking back, that I realised that our upbringing was unusual. I must ask my father. Was it my parents or my grandparents who had slipped the reins and allowed us that freedom when we were in the country? In truth it had stood me in good stead in my masquerade to conceal my sex. I was not afraid to ride or climb like a boy. Had I always been reared as the demure daughter Caterina, a part I had sometimes played in Coimbra, then the boy Christoval would have found life difficult indeed.

I held my horse back to a gentle walking pace as we descended the steep path to the farm. I did not want to make a dramatic entry and alarm the inhabitants. Shut away in this remote valley, they must have few visitors. A stranger arriving thus on horseback might mean trouble – a tax collector, perhaps, or the forerunner of a troop of Spanish horse demanding food and quartering. I did not want to find a crossbow confronting me before I could explain my business here.

The farm was not prepossessing. Indeed it was not what I had expected from valued and respectable tenants of my grandfather. There were a few scrawny sheep in a dirty pen, some mangy chickens scratching listlessly in the dirt, and a vicious dog chained up, who would have had the leg off my horse if he could have come near enough.

The whole farm appeared deserted. Could this really be the place where my sister had been lodged for seven years, since that summer when she was ten? The summer when everything fell apart. It was here, we had been told, that she and Felipe had fallen ill, and Felipe had died. It was because of those few words of reassurance from Dr Gomez, as we crouched in the fisherman’s boat in Ilhavo,  promising Isabel would recover, that I had clung all these years to hope. It was those words which had brought me to Portugal, to find my sister and bring her home with me. Yet I was appalled at the sight of the farm, a filthy neglected place. I had never been here before, but I knew that in the past the da Rocas had been considered excellent tenants and sound farmers. What I could see of the farm now seemed an outrage. This was no place for my sister.

I rode slowly down the last of the path, which led first to the farm, then continued on downhill past it, to the lower part of the valley, where I believed there were more tenant farms. Dismounting, I left my horse to stand at the far edge of the yard, and made my way warily in a wide circle around the dog until I could reach the front door of the house and bang on it with my fist. It hung askew, and the mean windows on either side were shuttered. Everything was very dirty, and the paint on the woodwork had blistered and peeled off long ago. No one answered my knock, but I saw a slatternly girl come out of the cowshed with a pail of milk and head towards the back of the house. She wore a ragged dress, with her hair hanging in lank tresses below her shoulders. Her feet were bare and filthy. I shouted at her, but she ignored me. I banged again on the door, beginning to grow angry. Was she deaf? Was there no one else here?

At last, when I was thinking of going in pursuit of the girl round to the back of the house, a man of about thirty emerged from one of the outbuildings and came slowly towards me, glowering. I saw him take in the sword at my side, and the quality of my mount, and my clothes, which (though far from elegant) were many degrees better than his. He wore loose dirty breeches, like the slops our sailors wore, and a sleeveless tunic which revealed thickly muscled arms, from which wiry black hair sprung. Unlike the girl, he wore heavy boots. This, then, must be the farmer, though I had expected a much older man. The girl must be a maidservant or kitchen skivvy. The man shouted at the dog to be silent, and kicked him in the ribs. The cur slunk back to a patch of shade and lay down, his eyes never leaving me. The man straddled his legs, folded his thick arms across his chest, and regarded me with much the same expression as the dog. I was relieved to see that he was not carrying a weapon.

‘I am looking for Isabel Alvarez,’ I said, without preamble. If this man intended to be aggressive, I could return like for like. I would not let him intimidate me, however aggressive he appeared. Like him, I stood with legs apart and let my hand rest casually on the pommel of my sword.

‘And who are you?’ he said, in a tone that did not reflect our clearly different social status.

‘Her cousin, Christoval Alvarez,’ I said. I had no intention of revealing my true identity to this man, even if he was one of the family caring for my sister. Isabel herself, of course, would know me.

‘Have you proof of that?’ He spat, narrowly missing my foot.

I clenched my teeth. It was not this man’s place to demand such proof, but I did not intend to come to blows with him. Not if I could avoid it.

‘Naturally. Though I see no need for it.’ I put into my voice all the scorn of a Portuguese aristocrat speaking to a labourer. I would not be intimidated by this fellow. My indignation was burning in my cheeks.

I produced the passport Dom Antonio had provided me with. If this man was a supporter of King Philip of Spain, I was placing myself in great danger, but I must somehow gain access to my sister. However, here in this remote farm it was likely that the fellow took little interest in politics. If the Spanish invaders left him alone, he probably cared nothing, one way or another, who ruled the country. As my grandfather’s tenant, his obligations in rent and duty would be to him, rather than to the Spanish. He took the passport, stared at it in such a way that I knew he could not read, then handed it back to me.

‘You have read it?’ I said blandly, aware that he had not. ‘You can see that I am Christoval Alvarez, cousin of Isabel Alvarez, and I demand that you take me to her at once.’ I was pleased that my voice was firm, with all the authority I had a right to, as a member of his overlord’s family.

A look crossed his face which I did not like. A barely suppressed smile, a knowing smile. It gave me a brief stab of unease. With a jerk of his head he indicated to me to follow him round to the back of the house. We crossed the yard, which was no more than beaten earth, liberally scattered with dung. Broken farm tools, lengths of wood, dented buckets, and unidentifiable rubbish lay everywhere, so that I had to pick my way amongst the obstacles, though the way was so familiar to the farmer that he moved swiftly across the yard before halting before an open door. Like the front door, this one hung crookedly. It could be cold here in the mountains in winter. The January wind must find its way through the house, from the gaping front door to the back, with its icy fingers touching everything. My sister Isabel was living amongst this filth and squalor and misery?

The door on this side led directly into a kitchen roofed with beams so low the man had to stoop and I could only just stand upright. The girl I had seen before was slicing onions and wiping tears from her eyes. She was cutting straight on to a scarred table of pine, so old that it dipped in the middle like a sway-backed horse. A child of about four, naked from the waist down, was playing on the floor with what I thought at first was a furry toy, before I realised that it was a dead rat. A baby was lying directly on the dirt floor, half wrapped in a filthy blanket, moth eaten and frayed. It had fallen open and the baby was naked underneath it, a girl child. She stared up at me with wide, vacant eyes. The girl by the table was visibly with child again. This must be the farmer’s wife, but where were the older couple, the da Rocas to whom my sister had been entrusted? Were they too dead?

The man pointed at the girl chopping onions.

‘That is Isabel Alvarez.’

When we were very young, Isabel and I shared a bed. Our nursemaid slept in the adjacent room with the baby Felipe, so there was no one to stop us whispering together on the hot sleepless nights of summer. I cannot now remember all that we talked of, what pressing concerns occupied our minds in those days. I think we complained of minor injustices and comforted each other in our sorrows. I know that when my pet sparrow died, and I cried all night, Isabel put her arms around me and cried too. We must have had plans and dreams, but these are lost now from memory, except that I remember we were never to be parted, and if our parents should marry us to husbands who lived far apart, we would run away and live together in the magical forest of Buçaco, where we would build one of our secret houses, like the ones we built every summer when we stayed at the solar, only bigger, with carpets on the floor. That was a point of luxury Isabel always insisted upon: carpets from Turkey on the floor. I had my own requirements. I wanted to be sure it would have a place for dogs and horses. Isabel conceded that.

‘But they must not walk on the carpets,’ she said earnestly, and I promised that I would make sure they did not.

When you have shared every bath with your sister and laid your head on the same pillow every night, you come to know every detail of her body as well as your own. Isabel had a tiny mole behind her left ear, not much larger than the head of a farthingale pin, and sometimes I would tickle it to wake her in the morning. I stared now at this slovenly woman with her brood of children and knew she could not be my sister. Her eyes were dull and stupid. She must surely be older than seventeen. And yet, and yet . . . There was something in the curve of the cheek, the shape of the hand that held the chopping knife.

I stepped forward and lifted the lank, greasy hair away from the girl’s left ear. She flinched away, and the hand with the knife flew up towards me. I leapt back.

‘What are you doing!’ the man shouted, bounding across the room to me.

My heart was pounding painfully. Isabel would never aim a knife at me.

‘I know how to prove if this is indeed Isabel Alvarez,’ I said. I was breathing hard and I felt sickness rising in my throat. ‘Tell her I mean her no harm. Tell her to put the knife down.’

I do not know why I addressed him instead of her. Perhaps some instinct prompted me.

‘Do as he says,’ he said roughly to the girl, then took the knife from her hand and threw it across the table. The baby began to cry, and the boy – I saw now that it was a boy – stood up and sidled behind the man who, I suppose, was his father.

I stepped forward and cautiously lifted the girl’s hair again. Her whole body was tense with terror. The skin of her neck was dirty, but there, just below her hairline, was the tiny mole.

‘Oh, Isabel,’ I said, and I could not stop my tears, ‘Isabel, what has happened to you?’

Isabel looked from the man to me and back again, her lips slightly parted and that dull, hopeless look in her eyes. I had never seen such a look of utter despair.

‘You’ll get little sense out of her,’ the man said, with some complacency. ‘She can cook, a little, and keep my bed warm, but she is no good for anything else.’

‘What have you done to her!’ I turned on him, shouting. ‘She was beautiful and clever when last I saw her, at ten years old. Now I find her, barely seventeen, treated like a slave and bearing your brats.’

‘No blame to me,’ he said insolently. He leaned his shoulders against the bare stone wall and smiled again, that knowing smile. ‘She and her brother both fell ill when they were placed here in my mother’s care by Senhor da Alejo, seven years ago. The boy died and the girl developed brain fever. When she recovered she had become simple-minded, as you see.’

‘But surely my . . . my great-uncle came for her?’ I was losing the thread of my story and my pretended relationship with Isabel. ‘And why did your mother betray her trust by letting you take her as your whore?’ I was breathless with horror and confusion.

‘As for the Senhor, he didn’t want her.’ He shrugged indifferently. ‘Until her death five years ago my mother taught the girl to be useful. Simple cooking. How to milk the cow and grow vegetables. And she is my wife and not my whore.’

I did not believe him, with his loud voice and his shifty eyes. I knew he was lying.

How could this have happened? My grandfather would surely have come for Isabel as soon as it was safe, as soon as the Inquisition had given up their search of the area, even if her mind had been as severely damaged as the man said. But it could be that the search had continued. Perhaps he waited until the woman of the farm died, thinking her safe here from the Inquisitors, and then found it was too late. But our grandfather was dead, and now I would never know the reason. This foul villain must have got her with child when she was no more than twelve. And I did not believe he had married her, for there was something that had the ring of falsehood in his voice.

I went to the girl and put my arms around her, but she stood stiff in them, rigid as a wild animal about to run for its life. Oh, what had they done to her!

‘Isabel,’ I said quietly, crooning as if to a child, ‘Isabel, don’t you know me?’

I brushed the greasy hair back from her face, and kissed her gently on her dirty cheek. Her cheek that was still soft and childlike, though I saw that it was bruised below the eye, and there was more bruising on her neck, as if fingers had been tightened around her throat. I could make out the impression of fingers. It seemed to me that she relaxed a little as I held her, and for the first time she looked at me with eyes that had a mind behind them.

‘Don’t you know me?’ I rocked her gently, and began to hum a tune our nurse sang to us when we were sick or fretful. She opened her mouth as if she would speak, then she looked over my shoulder and caught the eye of the man, standing watchful behind me. Her face closed down again. She shook her head and tried to pull away from me. I put my lips close to her ear, that he might not hear, and whispered.

‘Isabel,’ I said, no more than a breath, ‘I am Caterina. Take no heed of these boy’s clothes, they are simply for safety’s sake. I’ve come to take you home.’

For a moment intelligence flashed into her eyes and she knew me. She put her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder. So softly that it too was only a breath, she whispered, ‘Caterina.’

The man jumped forward and dragged us apart.

‘What are you whispering about? Leave her alone, she’s my wife. You, get back to your work!’

And he struck her a violent blow on the side of the head, which sent her staggering away from me, gasping for breath, but silent. It was the silence that wrenched at my heart. She only stopped herself from falling by catching hold of the edge of the table.

At once her head drooped, her eyes became dull, and she was again the wretched whore of a brutal farmer. Mechanically, she picked up the knife and began chopping the onions again, but I saw that her hands trembled and she nicked the side of her thumb so that blood ran, staining the onions and the table. She sucked her thumb, but did not lift her eyes.

The little boy began to cry, but quietly, as if he too had already learned to suppress the sound of his grief and pain. Even so, the man cuffed him and sent him sprawling across the room, where he crouched in a corner with his hands over his head, his shoulders heaving, but silent. Even so, the baby sensed something and began the thin gulping of breath that is the first sign of tears. Isabel laid down the knife and bent awkwardly, pregnant as she was, to pick the baby up off the floor. She was clearly still stunned by the blow, but she held the child against her shoulder, stroking her back with a hand that was shaking. Her thumb left a patch of blood on the baby’s back.

‘I have come to take Isabel home to her family!’ I shouted at the man. ‘You have no right to keep her here.’

‘She is my wife.’ He was sneering, sure of his power over her. ‘In law she is my property, as surely as my dog or my sheep or my cow or my chickens.’

‘Prove it. Show me some me some proof of your marriage. Who was the priest who married you? Did her grandfather give his consent?’

He swayed back.

Ah, I thought, I have you there.

‘Come, Isabel,’ I said, I am going to take you home.’

He stepped between us.

‘Show me your proof, then, Senhor Alvarez.’ He mocked me with the word ‘Senhor’, as though I had no claim to it. ‘How can you prove you have the right to take her from me? Has Senhor da Alejo commanded it?’

From the way he spoke, I realised he had not yet heard that our grandfather was dead.

‘Yes,’ I said boldly. ‘He has commanded it. And you had best do as he commands, for he is your master, and if you do not obey, I shall see that you lose this farm and your livelihood as well.’ My heart was beating fast and I spat out the words, so outraged that I was becoming careless.

‘Then let him come. He has not come for her these five years, since my mother died.’

‘The world is changing,’ I said, rash in my desperate need to rescue Isabel from this place. ‘King Antonio has returned, with Drake’s English fleet and army at his back. He has already been hailed as King of Portugal in Peniche. I travelled with them. Now we are on our way to Lisbon. We will drive all the Spaniards out of Portugal and it will be a free country again.’

He gaped at me. Clearly no word had come to this remote place from Coruña or Peniche. He shook his head.

‘You lie.’

‘It is true, and you will hear of it soon enough, even here in the forest.’

I saw that the conviction in my tone had convinced him, or at least made him pause to change his tactics.

‘You have not proved your right to take her. I do not know that you are even of her family.’ His face was twisted in a sneer. ‘Perhaps you want her for your own whore!’

I was so startled by this that I began to laugh, which angered him more. This was the last thing I had expected. My astonishment made me slip my guard. And then I did a foolish thing, and cast away all caution.

‘None has a better right than I to take her away!’ I cried passionately. ‘I am her sister, Caterina. She recognised me just now.’

Isabel had stayed cowering beside the table since he had hit her, trying to comfort the baby, but she looked at me now with frightened eyes and I realised I had taken one step too far. She opened her mouth to speak, then pressed her lips together with a look of despair. The little boy had crept on hands and knees to his mother and was clinging to the ragged hem of her skirt.

‘Her sister!’ He leapt at me, and before I could stop him had torn open my doublet and shirt. ‘A woman? You are a woman?’

I pulled away and tried to fasten my clothes. I was shaking. Oh, fool that I was!

‘I can handle a sword as well as any man, so keep your distance.’ I drew my sword a few inches from the scabbard and looked at him defiantly, but I knew that I had made a fatal mistake.

He stood back and folded his arms again. To my surprise, he smiled. Then laughed. It was a sound to strike fear, but I refused to show it.

‘A woman. Her sister.’ He gave another great hoot of laughter, then spat, so that a gob of spittle landed on the table beside the chopped onions. ‘Then you must be the heretic, Caterina Alvarez. They came searching for you at the solar when you escaped from Coimbra. That time they took your grandmother away, that old woman, another heretic. And killed her – good riddance. A true-blooded Portuguese like your grandfather should never have married a dirty Jew like that and got all this brood of heretics. He may be my master as you call him, but he brought that curse on himself.’

He was grinning in elation, all the long hatred of centuries distilled into the look he fixed on me.

‘The Inquisition will be glad to know that you have returned,’ he said, triumph and glee mixed in his voice, ‘when I report you. A heretic, a Jew, and now masquerading as a man-woman. This time it is certain. It will be the fire for you.’ His face gleamed with salacious pleasure as he fixed his eyes on my gaping shirt.

It was checkmate. If he did succeed in reporting me to the Inquisitors before I could reach the safety of Peniche and the protection of our expedition, I was bound for the fire. I felt sick with terror.

‘Isabel!’ I cried, reaching out my arms to her. ‘Come with me!’ Tears were running unchecked down my cheeks. My sister.

Isabel too was weeping, but she shook her head slowly, making a helpless gesture with her free hand. Behind the man’s back she mouthed the words at me, ‘The children.’ It was unanswerable.

I was helpless. The children were clinging to her. Even if I could get her away, how could I rescue the children? And I knew, whatever I said, she would not leave without them.

At last she found her voice. ‘Go, Caterina! Quickly! Go!’ Her voice broke in a sob. ‘You cannot help me. Go!’

Then suddenly the man leapt forward and  seized the knife from the table. He sprang for me, but I was expecting it. I grabbed a stool and flung it at his knees. It was a lucky throw. I heard the crack as it struck bone. He staggered and tripped, and before he could regain his balance I was out through the door and racing for my horse, who stood where I had left him at the other end of the yard, keeping well clear of the vicious dog. I had to weave my way through all the rubbish strewn about the yard and in my blind panic I fell over a broken rake, landing on my knees and scraping my palms on the hard and gritty soil. The man was already through the door and coming for me fast, the knife in his hand. As I scrambled to my feet, I felt a sharp stab of pain in the ankle which I had sprained.

Running lopsided, I reached the far side of the yard and threw myself across the saddle on my stomach, thanking all the stars in Heaven that the horse was smaller than Hector so I had no need of a mounting block. He was already moving as I caught the reins in my left hand and urged him back along the track to the forest, even before I was able to swing my right leg over his back and find my stirrups. He was rested now, and fear of the dog drove him all the faster. He had no need of my urging to break into his swiftest gallop.

Behind us, I could hear the sounds of the farmer unchaining the dog, and yelling curses and threats after me, but I counted on his having no horse. Nowhere about the farm had I seen any sign of one. Probably he managed with a draught ox or even just a donkey. He could never catch me on my army officer’s stallion. The horse could hear the animal behind us as well as I could, for it gave tongue like a trained hunting dog, so he flew down the track as if the very hounds of Hell were on his heels. Crouched low in the saddle, I left him to find his own way, for I was blinded and racked with sobs as the place that held my sister Isabel dwindled into the distance behind me, to be lost beyond the forest trees of Buçaco.