Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards (19 page)

“No.” Now I was furious. “You're not listening. There was a man, I'm sure of it. He ran down the ladder and he's gone. No one else saw anything. He really meant it, Ventura, he wanted me to die.”

“We'll get to the bottom of this,” he said, and hugged me. The other actors were chattering and gesticulating, still animated from the
mishap. “Come, Rosana,” Ventura went on, “you must change and be ready. We've sent an invitation to the royal box, inviting them backstage. Quickly, quickly. We'll deal with this later, I swear it.”

My fingers shook as I flew through my preparations; the dresser had to slap my hands away because they were bleeding from the ropes. I was bandaged, my hands slipped into gloves, then I was laced into my finest new court gown, breasts high and saucy, ready for my official audience with the young Bourbon-Two Sicilies. As I gingerly removed my stage makeup, a rotund, anxious-looking man with a cast on his leg entered the dressing room. There were happy screams: “Emilio! Darling, how are you?” He'd been in the audience that night; he'd seen my performance. Emilio had a cast on his leg. He couldn't possibly have beetled down that ladder with such speed and dexterity. But wait, I thought, could he have arranged it? Could he hate me that much for usurping his role? I told myself not to be foolish. But as I watched my fellow artists and felt them excluding me, quite deliberately, I knew that to them, I had not earned my way. And that is a cardinal sin in the theatre.

Just then, the infantas arrived with their chaperones and guards. The dressing room had that afternoon been hurriedly filled with flowers, after the official royal consent to attend had been received, and now became the scene of much bowing and scraping. The little girls took this in their stride; the youngest, Luisa Fernanda, offered her small hand many times, and everyone bent over it with soft words of fealty. It was obvious that Isabel, the thirteen-year-old, disliked this ritual. She nodded her head and bestowed stiff smiles instead. She was an unprepossessing looking person: fat as a little porker stuffed into her gown, with a raw, red face and hands, and an extremely turned up nose, which unfortunately did not mitigate her porcine impression.

Suddenly the youngest spotted me and rushed over, her young face gleaming with pleasure. “Cupid!” she cried, “I love you!” Ventura bowed himself into a fever at this, others in the company looked sour, and Emilio's pudgy face seemed about to shatter.

The sweet little one reached up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “I think you are beautiful,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “I hope you will come to stay with us.”

I could hear an audible gasp of joy and surprise from Ventura, behind me.

“Majesty,” I murmured, “I would be most grateful. An honour.”

“No. I hope it will be fun,” she said.

So there it was. I had done it, against the odds. Courageously, strongly! The Príncipe, its tattered company, unsafe conditions and even its treacherous make-believe fly man could go hang: I'd shown them! I'd done it! Part one, accomplished. Part two, about to commence.

Life changed quickly after my introduction to royalty. I moved out of my rooms near the theatre district and into the royal palace, into the most glamourous bedchamber I had ever seen. More people to look me up and down with disdain, thinking I hadn't earned it: lady's maids and tiring women, Spanish grandees with pencil-thin mustaches, skinny calves, and leathery skin. Pooh on them all! I felt like a conqueror. Waking late in the morning, after my performance had tired me out the night before. Being served breakfast in bed, whatever I wanted, by a maid who was told to ensure I was happy, even if she disapproved of me with every ounce of her tight-lipped being. “More coffee,” I'd say, holding my cup out just to annoy her, “black as the ace of spades,
por favor
.” Once I was up, I'd wander down insanely majestic hallways and peek around imperial doorways, openmouthed at the opulence. The littlest princess had told me proudly, “There are twenty-eight hundred rooms in the palace,” so I was trying very hard not to get lost! Once I'd found the princesses each morning, I'd lounge about with them, doing what they did: going for drives in coaches-and-six, playing games in a variety of incredible gardens connected to the palace, swanning up and down during lengthy and tedious appearances before their courtiers (what
do
all these overdressed people hang around for, anyway?), and sitting in the background, out of the way, while they were receiving their education from the tutor.

Yes, the tutor. There he was at last: Arguëlles, focus of my main assignment. Cristina and Grimaldi had made me fear him as some sort
of radical, cerebral giant; they professed themselves terrified of the unsettling effect he was having upon the girls. From what I could see, the infantas carried on blithely being the rather spoiled children they were. The man certainly worked hard at changing their compass, and he
was
full of frighteningly extremist ideas (from a monarchist point of view). But the most dire problem was one they hadn't warned me about: Arguëlles was one of the ugliest men I had ever set eyes on, and the thought of having to seduce him was abhorrent.

With one glance, the task had taken on Herculean proportions. Large, pendulous lips that flung spittle around when he grew animated, which was often. Breath that would stun a boar at ten paces. Thin, greasy hair sitting on top of the largest, roundest head I could imagine. Making up for the hair he lacked on his head, he had meaty hands with dark fur around the knuckles, fur which extended all the way up the backs of his hands, fluffing out around his cuffs, and no doubt getting thicker and hairier all the way up (and down,
¡mierda!
). A barrel chest with a globular stomach. No ass—completely flat. And thin shanks which he (for some reason) loved to display, thinking as he did that they were his finest feature. Big paddle feet joined to these desiccated shanks—truly a work of art. Coupled with his appearance, he possessed an unlikable personality of immense aggrandizement. He was intelligent, this is true. From a poor peasant family (as most of these Spanish up-and-comers seemed to be), he had trained under the Jesuits and, through their teachings, developed his mind and political acumen. He was ambitious and ingratiating. Delicate work. Almost as delicate as the work I'd been commissioned to accomplish. We were like two agents on opposite sides, tunneling away to destroy the other's side.

Wait, we were not
like
that, silly me! That is
exactly
what we were.

On the first morning, I sat in the schoolroom observing him from the corners of my eyes. How could such an uncouthly put together bundle of manhood be feared as a radical of the first degree? As if conscious of being the centre of my thought, his glance slid up and slithered over me, point by point. I felt contaminated. I had never gone to bed with a man who did not attract me, to put it mildly. More truthfully? Who viscerally repulsed me. However would I get through this ordeal? I schooled
my lips to smile serenely. His voice droned on and on, spittle flew, and I felt ill.

After the lesson, the infantas trailed off to their next engagement: Luisa Fernanda with enthusiastic glee and Isabel in plodding resignation. Shite and double
merde.

“It seems likely we shall be spending many hours in the same room, señor,” I ventured, fluttering my lashes.

“Perhaps you will learn something,” he muttered in his unpleasant, nasal voice, gathering together his papers and books.

“Oh, doubtless,” I trilled, and moved closer. Ye gads, he was repulsive. He had such a dank, sour smell. “I am always intrigued by a man with abundant knowledge.” I put my little hand upon his own.

His eyes flew up and pierced mine before he snatched his furry paw away and shook it, as if ridding it of fleas. Oh good God. Did Grimaldi have any idea what he was asking me to accomplish?

I tried again. “Señor Arguëlles, I would be most grateful if you would occasionally give
me
a small, intellectual chore. I am not wealthy . . .” I paused and looked down, becomingly, “but perhaps there are other ways in which I might—”

His head reared back and he peered at me sternly. “What on earth are you talking about? And why are you here in the first place? I heard you are some sort of,” his voice became ironic and huffy, “thespian. Not at all the kind of person the future queen should have near her.”

“You have very elegant legs and ankles,” I said foolishly, not being able to think of anything else in this world which might interest him so much.

He paused, and he did look down for an instant, at himself, and I could see his ecumenical mind ticking away, acknowledging that I was indeed correct in this matter. Then he made a wet, snorting sound through his nose as if highly desirous of swallowing as much snot as was humanly possible. “Good day to you,” he said, and flung himself out of the room.

After such a wretched beginning, I was more than ever concerned about the aftermath of this undertaking. I was in so deep. I had evaded a murderous demon in the theatre and nobody seemed to care, and now
this? No one had convinced me that I would be safe, should I manage to seduce the brute. Arguëlles had friends in high places; why would they dismiss
him,
and not
me?
I would simply be considered some theatrical slut who had tried to get above herself, who'd tried to sleep her way into favour. Too cruel, too disgusting—I was going to fail. It was not possible. But then images of my darling Emma's ears . . . Oh, my confidence had received a rough shake, indeed.

Turmoil boiled through me as I sat in the schoolroom day after day, observing the tutor's furtive narcissism. After my compliment about his legs, I could see he believed he was impressing me; his chest puffed out even further and he kept slicking the few hairs on his head back into place. Ugh. He was coming around to the idea, I thought morosely. Men almost always do, being such prisoners to their pricks. Days, then a week ticked by while I delayed my odious undertaking; Ventura was sending me angry notes, backstage, on a regular basis: “What is happening? Has he disgraced himself yet?” Meanwhile, Arguëlles ate raw onions as a kind of mid-morning tonic; we all turned our faces away, then spontaneously fled. Could he not tell? Did he not care?

On a happier note, in the afternoons the girls and I spent hours with the croquet mallets outside the palace, cracking wooden balls through hoops, with fallen leaves rustling underfoot. Luisa Fernanda and I were both terrible cheats. Though at first we denied it, I could tell she thought it wonderful that I cheated in the same way she did: urging my ball ahead with an expert kick while Isabel wasn't looking. After a while, Luisa Fernanda and I openly cheated, snickering at each other as we did so, then lounging on the grass while we watched and waited for the almost-queen to catch up.

Poor Isabel. I say poor, but of course that's not remotely the right word. Rich as stink the girl was, and about to rule one of the world's powers (though all that marrying of first cousins couldn't be good for it). Her mind had room in it for only three things, I discovered: food, her impending sovereignty, and sex. But the biggest undoubted handicap to Isabel's wanton desires (after all, a Spanish aristocrat in search of safe haven will marry anything) was the state of her epidermis. The package she came wrapped in was that of a lizard. Apparently,
mamá
Cristina had spent a fortune on cures, but nothing ever helped on a permanent basis. Isabel had a disease called ichthyosis, causing her head, face, and entire body to be covered with a dry, scaly skin. Thermal baths, spas, sea baths: All gave only temporary alleviation. A day or two later it was back with a vengeance. When the girl wasn't eating, she was scratching. The raw redness of her face was made odder by the redness of her eyes, which protruded. Hence, poor girl. I really meant it.

“Baby Luisa,” Isabel called, as she stood swinging her mallet, looking about with a halfhearted squint, “have you seen my ball?”

“Right behind you,” Luisa Fernanda trilled, leaping up with a skip and a hop, “but Rosana and I are winning again.”

“Bother. This is a dumb game.”

Isabel was always alone, even when surrounded by people. It was like an inherited flaw; as her father had apparently done, the scalyskinned infanta repelled sympathy without noticing that she was doing so. Watching her totter around on her court shoes, I thanked my stars that I was not born into such an elevated station. The littlest one had a much luckier life ahead, as far as I could tell.

When it was time for siesta, Luisa Fernanda would invite me into her bedchamber to lie down with her and play. The royal rooms were gorgeously outfitted, of course, but also strewn with toys and other small girl objects, I was glad to see. At least she was allowed to be herself in her own private space. Her women were upset about being turned out, but Nanda was determined. “Rosana's fun, and I want to talk with her. Now go.” People who are not Spanish (especially the English) have a strange revulsion towards the noble tradition of siesta: They can't believe that the population of entire countries lays down their work in the middle of the day in order to eat, sleep, and indulge themselves with a lover for hours at a time in the afternoon sunshine. I can't think of anything nicer. Of course, the latter was not happening at this juncture. I was being very good, playing innocently with children.