Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards (32 page)

I was up again, crouching, like a spitting cat about to tear his face off, when he held up a hand, “No, no, señorita, it's me!”

The young man in livery who'd delivered the chocolate. “Do you know the way out?” I gasped, my head on fire and the room spinning sickeningly. I fell over and must have blacked out once more. After an unknown amount of time, I could feel him again solicitously cradling my throbbing orb in his lap. “Will you help me?” I whimpered, eyes closed.

“Of course I will. I would
kill
to help you,” he said in a passionate voice.

“Stop speaking of killing!” How much time had I lost? “I must sit up.” He assisted, and again I thought I would heave out my insides before calmness prevailed and objects stood still. “How long have we been here? Where is this? I must get away!”

“Perhaps an hour? Or slightly more. My sleeping quarters.”

“Oh no, an
hour
? Not so long, please, oh please!” Reaching up, pulling out as many of the pins as I could find, I yanked off the wig, taking some clumps of my own hair with it.

The young man looked astounded and his eyes bulged. “I thought it was your own.” He seemed disappointed. “I brought you in here, out of the corridor, and lucky I did. Two guardsmen ran past, searching for you, only moments later.”

Oh
merde
and triple fuck! “Where can I get rid of this so it will never be discovered?” I begged, giving the wig a shake.

“I will be honoured to take it.” And the poor fool, kneeling beside me on his bed, held out his hand with a gentlemanly gesture.

“I can't do that, you'd be in terrible danger! If it was ever found on you—well, let's not think of the consequences!”

“The danger would be worth it if just once a woman as beautiful as
you
came looking for
me,
” the silly boob uttered, eyes uplifted with the rapture of a martyr. What
is
it with Spanish men and danger?

My head was clearing. I was thinking swiftly. “Why are you willing to help me?” I asked.

“These days, no one is who they seem, señorita. We all have our eyes in different directions.”

Fair enough. I thrust the wig at him and he secreted it inside the breast of his liveried uniform. “Lead me out?” I whispered, getting to my feet with only a small wobble of nausea, then retrieving my muff, which had been lying with me on the bed.

He knelt at my feet, gestured for me to raise my skirts. Oh for the love of God! Then I realized and raised them while he did up my bootlaces, so I wouldn't be as likely to break my neck. A practical young man. Now at least I was clothed and decent, I could hopefully pass unnoticed into the streets. Just get me out.

“There was a man,” he said. “You tripped on him. He's lying dead.”

“What! My God!” I shook him by his liveried shoulders. “Show me!”

He took my hand, peered round the door out into the corridor, and we began to run, back to the hallway where I must have fallen. There, lying in a pool of his own blood, now congealing, lay dark, strong Pedro Coria. Unmistakably. Long hands upturned and grasping the air, mustache bristling. Glass eye still open, staring at nothing. What was he doing here? Always, wherever I turn, there is Coria. Now, no more Coria.

“Go, go!” I urged the youth.

We ran on, down a set of stairs. My head was beating a staccato of questions: Diego, my reckless stallion, my beloved, where are you, what's happening to you? Out through an enormous, shadowy kitchen to a darkened back door. The boy found the key, turned it in the lock, and swung the door open. The night beckoned, full of menace. I could see the hulking presence of the royal palace, huge in its aloof grandeur, looming above us. No one in sight. I turned back and gave the young man a kiss on the cheek. “
Gracias por tutto.
Get rid of the wig—burn it immediately!”

“I will do what I need to do, you can be sure, dear señorita.”

A thought struck me and I stared at him, horrified. “You'll keep it as evidence! You're going to give me away!”

“Never! I would never do such a thing.” He looked appalled at the thought. “It's just that . . . I wanted to keep it. To remember you by.”

I grabbed his shoulder and hissed into his face, “Don't you dare, you stupid boy. Remember this, instead.” And I kissed him on the lips, with full force and grateful thanks. “Burn it!” My last image was of the dazed look in his eyes. A conspirator in training, happy to sacrifice his life for a kiss. I ran.

Light was beginning to leak into the sky as I fled down the street outside the palace, clutching the pistol concealed in the muff. I tried to be as inconspicuous as a woman could be while running, panting, and holding a stitch in her side. I fixed a smile on my face as if everything's
fine, I'm just in a bit of a hurry, children to feed, husbands to placate. When really the terrified refrain pounded on: What to do? Where to go? What's the time, if light is appearing? Not yet dawn, the sun's not up, therefore surely not yet! Death at dawn! How can this be prevented? I started gibbering again, brain banging around inside my poor half-fractured skull.

Rounding the corner onto the Plaza de Palacio, I came up short. People were milling everywhere; a huge crowd had gathered. What were they looking for? What had they heard? I immediately feared the worst—was this a military contingent? Sent to quell the populace? Rifles, bayonets? Desperate men?

I grabbed the shoulder of the nearest person and asked, “What is happening?”

“I don't know, doña. Someone said conspiracy. The army is out, be careful for yourself.”

“If there were to be reprisals, executions . . . ?”

He turned appalled eyes to mine. “Such things will never happen again. And never here.”

“Then where?”

“Somewhere else!” He rushed away. I asked others, weeping and trying to dash the tears from my eyes, but they shook their heads or shook me off with brusque voices: “Not here, doña!” and “We don't know anything.”

“Then why are you all standing around! What are you expecting?” I shrieked, and they ran away from me, covering their heads and faces in fear of being recognized.

I didn't know what else to do, so I ran the few blocks to the Príncipe—perhaps Ventura was there. Maybe he'd know where the prime minister would have taken the prisoners. But surely, I tried to reassure myself, Espartero would
surely
have reconsidered, after the heat of the moment. He couldn't possibly go ahead and shoot the generals in cold blood, with no questions asked—no trial, no possibility of reclamation. It wasn't human! Then I remembered the rictus-distorted face above me, only hours before. I grabbed up my skirts and ran on, panting and sobbing.

The stage doorman stormed from his booth and attempted to stop me, but I hurtled past, not listening. “Ventura!” I called, “Ventura, are you here? Please! Help me!”

In the principal dressing room, I found him. And his brother. The playwright was sitting, head bowed. Father Miguel stood, as usual, in the shadows.

“Do you know what has happened?” I cried. “Get up, you must help me, we have to go—”

“The military have just been here,” the Jesuit said, severely. “They were looking for a certain Patrizia Olivares, actress. Always you involve us, always you say too much. We told them we have never heard of her, but my brother has now come under suspicion.”

“Oh my God, oh Ventura—”

“Don't torture her, Miguel.” Ventura looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “It's over. They're dead.”

I sank to the floor. I was too late. And it swept over me with the force of an ocean: My love, my gorgeous Diego, was no longer in the world. The world was emptied, barren and bleak. There was nothing in it.

“We should never have trusted a woman like you,” Father Miguel was saying, the words stinging with a fearsome rasp. “I tried to warn Grimaldi. Adding insult to injury, only yesterday news of your divorce arrived from Hernandez. It was heard in court, just before Christmas. It is done; you are free.” Something in his hateful tone now made me look up, miserably. “Free, that is, as a woman such as yourself understands it. Shamelessly.”

“Miguel, stop. It's neither the time nor the place.”

“She must understand her guilt in this matter!” the Jesuit screamed at his brother, before spraying me again with his vitriol. “Distractions! Seductions! Women like you are poison to men of integrity and resolution. You suck the marrow from us; you make us weak!”

Ventura was looking at me with clouded eyes. He hadn't the strength to stop his brother's tirade, and I could barely decipher the words, demolished as I was by grief and remorse.

“The military also asked about a traitor they shot dead late last night. They believe you to be connected. I suspect it was Coria, was it not?”
The Jesuit was almost prancing with malice. “I've revised my opinion, Ventura. This female and he were in league together! They've been spying upon
us,
for their own treacherous purposes!”

I leapt to my feet and would have torn the beard from his abominable cheeks, if Ventura hadn't jumped between us and pushed us apart with a roar. “Have some respect! Our brothers are dead!”

Father Miguel turned away in disgust, and I again sank to the floor. My head was throbbing and I thought I'd be sick: Someone please wake me from this horror. Round and round the mulberry bush—

“
¡Puta!
” the
padre
spat.

—pop goes the weasel. It didn't matter; none of it mattered. I put my head down on the floor and wept. And sobbed. What did I care what either of them thought? My stallion, dead? My heart cracked in half.

Ventura was saying, “This operation has been a disaster from the beginning. Her Majesty María Cristina blows hot and cold, and we ride the storms.” Then, perhaps to himself, “All we can hope is that Grimaldi will return to Spain. We need him. Maybe he will come back—by invitation, now. Return as a statesman.”

I stood up, took two steps towards him, and slapped Ventura's face, hard. Then I turned on my heels and, once again, I ran.

This time, my feet knew where I needed to go before I did. It was difficult to breathe with the conflicting emotions reverberating through me: load my pistols and go back to his offices, shoot the white-haired fiend? Return to the theatre, shoot Father Miguel at point-blank range in the head? Such mad thoughts. I stood gasping outside Diego's home, asking myself what he would have wanted me to do. Then I rushed inside, crying out to his manservant that we were all undone, that his master was dead: “Executed without mercy, along with General de la Concha. Tell the others, and look out for yourselves!” His frightened eyes told me all I needed to know: He, and the rest of the household, would be gone within the hour.

I hurried into our bedchamber, not looking anywhere but at the wardrobe, where I yanked out a pair of Diego's everyday trousers and a
loose white shirt. I pulled them on, then stuffed the toes of a pair of his boots and jammed my feet in. I knotted my hair up on top of my head, crying and muttering desperately to myself, ransacking his things—that smelled of him, that remembered his shape!—until I discovered a soft felt hat, which I rammed on my head. Grabbed his favourite dark cloak and tied it on, for the cold. Then I pulled the faux book from the drawer where it lay, with the second pistol inside, took the first one out of the muff and placed it with the other. Ensured that the powder bag was full, found several other caps and loader, closed up the faux book and put it into a leather bag with a strap. Rifling through another drawer where Diego kept a stash of money, I threw everything that was there into the bag. From a drawer where I kept my jewels, I hesitated briefly, then pulled out my favourite peridot earbobs and stuffed them into one pocket, the diamond necklace from the earl in the other—to trade for cash, should I run short. By the window was a pitcher and basin; I washed my face, scrubbing off the remains of the evening's makeup with a shudder of revulsion. Then I ran out of the room, down to the kitchen, grabbed a loaf of bread. Go,
bandita.
Don't look back.