The Flesh and the Devil (36 page)

         
She said unevenly, as he stooped lithely to kiss her belly,
'Flatter yourself indeed!'

         
In answer he pinioned her, kissing her with a ruthlessness
that allowed her no reticence or privacy, and when his head lifted there was a
cold smile in his eyes.

         
'Well, I have no milk-and-water mistress but a clinging
woman would soon cloy,' he said almost detachedly. 'Rest while you can — I must
go now and begin preparations for our journey to Navarre.'

         
The early morning air felt cold against her flesh as he
raised himself and swung swiftly out of bed, and she quailed. When he turned to
glance back at her she was crouched against the bedhead like a despoiled nymph,
her tawny body outlined sharply against the crimson hangings, the bruises where
he had gripped her already showing duskily under her skin. Enmity was growing
in her passion-shadowed eyes as she stared back at him, and he added, 'Sleep
while you can —

         
and dream of Jaime de Nueva.'

         
The barb was so unexpected that Juana had no defences; she
received it in silence, shocked by the sudden deliberate cruelty and her own
unexpected pain. She watched numbly as he dressed, gathering up his discarded
clothes with the rapid efficiency that no emotion seemed to blur; even in that
single flash of whitehot temper he had been— efficient.

        
'Remember —' Tristan's voice made her start; he stood by the
bedside, buckling his sword-belt — 'that if your young knight-errant should
challenge me for despoiling your maiden honour, I shall have to kill him, no
matter how much you love him.'

         
The tiny hope she had begun to cherish was smothered, and
she retorted angrily, 'I have learned that your conscience does not weigh
murder like other men's! I shall not tell him what might risk his life at your
hands — I care for him more than that.'

         
'So,' he agreed evenly, and moved away from the bed. As he
reached the ruined window-grille she said, in a hard, unnatural voice, 'Do I
thank you for your society? I do not know what I should say at such a time as
this.' He looked back, his eyes inscrutable. 'You should say— he hesitated,
then shrugged—' "Good morning, Philip"?

         
The words in a strange tongue, made Juana frown in
uncomplicated puzzlement.

         
"Philip"? What is that?'

         
'It is my name — my real name. I sometimes weary of your
Spanish

         
"Felipe". Come, say it —' his voice was dry —
'you will only be bidding me
buenas dias.'

         
An unexpected, unwanted pang assailed her at the sudden,
too-vivid picture of a man isolated among people who did not even speak his
native language; then she stifled it. Stiffly, she said, 'Good morning,
Philip,' and he smiled twistedly, the scar prominent against the slight flush
in his hollowed cheeks.

         
'Good morning, Senorita de Arrelanos,' he responded
tonelessly and then went out into the slowly lightening dusk.

         
Every living soul in the Castillo Benaventes seemed to be
gathered in the great patio to mark Juana's departure, as if in deliberate
contrast to the almost furtive lack of ceremony on her arrival. There were
speeches and songs and the presentation of gifts; even the public return of the
untouched dowry that had been sent with her. As the little trunk was placed
before her, Juana found herself turning to glance involuntarily at Tristan,
only to find him gazing at it contemplatively. Then, as if in answer, his eyes
lifted to meet hers and she saw the cynicism in them.
A small price for
 
murder, his impassive face said.

         
She was appallingly aware of his tall figure standing
halfway down the patio steps, waiting patiently to assume charge of her when
all the ceremonious mummings were over. He towered above the heads of the
household servants, his red hair an arrogant flame in the brazen sunshine, and
his keen scrutiny made Jaime's proprietary presence, tender and assiduous by
her side, fade into insignificance. God help her, she thought, she had believed
that Jaime would protect her. . . .

         
The whole thing was no more than a rather tedious game to
Tristan, she realized as she began to take her leaves under his eyes — of a
grey-faced, somehow shrunken Dona Luisa, and of the humped, inert shape that
had been carried out in a gilded chair to make a token farewell because
etiquette demanded Eugenio de Castaneda's presence. As she curtsied before him
Juana thought she detected a flicker of life in the unfocussed eyes— thwarted,
malicious life— but then the slackened face was dead again, and she told
herself that she had been mistaken.

         
In the whole long pageant there had been no word of
Bartolome. Torres had spoken of the will of God, of the royal approbation of
Juana's selfless withdrawal from the ducal household. She had been treated more
like a visiting ambassador, returning home loaded with honours, than a bride
whose husband could not be found to marry her. Her head had begun to ache long
before it was done, and she wondered as she turned to descend the steps at last
whether the bolted brocades and taffetas, the plate, the ivory and gold and
silver had come from Valenzuela's coffers or Torres's own. Certainly, she
thought without emotion, he had not brought an Arab gelding with a gem-studded
harness all the way from Madrid.

         
Jaime was at her side as she went slowly down to the ducal
carriage, the wind in her face, her skirts swinging like a great bell. Now and
again she inclined her head in answer to the murmured farewells, but she did
not allow her gaze to rest on any one face. Only when she reached the carriage
steps did she turn to look back at the little group at the head of the stairs:
Torres upright and grave but with an air of triumph, de Castaneda barely
visible in his chair, Dona Luisa with her head turned to stare hopelessly at
Tristan.

         
The lack of any woman attendant to accompany Juana had been
Dona Luisa's last despairing attempt to bring a tinge of disgrace to Juana's
abrupt departure. That the girl should go so lightly, leaving others behind to
endure the waiting for Bartolome's discovery and Eugenio's death, had riven the
elder woman with almost as sharp a jealousy as the other — the thing she had
feared when she first saw Tristan step into Juana's path.

         
There was something,
 
she thought savagely as the mercenary took his
horse's reins from the hand of a waiting groom,
something between those two,
butI can never prove it; I could not bear to prove it.
 
All she could do was to make it known,
discreetly, that anyone who agreed to accompany the Senorita de Arrelanos on her
journey, whether base or noble, would not be permitted to return to her own
service. The peasants of Navarre would draw their own conclusions from that,
and Juana would not succeed in returning to her father without scathe on her
reputation. For once her unquestioned meekness had been an advantage, Dona
Luisa thought bitterly. Torres had requested her to provide Juana with servants
and had not bothered to enquire whether she had done so. Even now he must
suppose that at least a trio of waiting-women were sweltering inside the
carriage. That Torres might be fully aware of her deceit and approved it for
his own purposes had not entered her head.

         
Tristan swung himself easily into the saddle of his
gigantic bay, and the sour taste of rejection rose in Dona Luisa's throat as
she watched. She had sent to tell him to take the animal as her gift, together
with the salary that was owed him, but he had sent back the money as the price
of the horse. And now he was about to ride away and had not even turned his head
to look at her.

         
The dark-haired de Nueva boy had ridden close to the
carriage, and Dona Luisa could see Juana's face at the window. Would they say
something, complain that the carriage was empty of servants? The boy seemed
agitated and his horse pranced restlessly, but the girl seemed to be shaking
her head. . . . The two men were falling in on either side of the carriage, and
the outriders who were to accompany the small baggage-train of gifts formed a
hollow square behind. There was no outcry, and the little cavalcade set forward
at a dignified, deliberate pace.

         
With a shiver that shook her in spite of the hot sun, Dona
Luisa stretched out her hands to pat the reassuringly helpless shape of her
husband.

         
As the carriage passed underneath the archway that led
through the castillo's wards to the great gate, Juana sat back with a long
sigh. She could not have borne, she was thinking, to wait while Jaime returned
to Torres and debated, as he had wanted to, the attendants due to her
consequence and her honour. She wanted only to be away, out of sight where
there was no danger that an onlooker would see the sign of shame that she felt
must be branded on her forehead — nothing else mattered now.

         
She relaxed against the jolting seat, not thinking, not
feeling, as the carriage swung round sharply and began to descend the road that
wound down the hill to the barren plain below. It was not ten days since her
father's carriage had laboured up that road, and the sound of her own voice
came back to her, questioning Martinetti:
Is the Duque lord of a wasteland?

         
At that
 
moment she
froze, horror paralysing her so utterly that she felt as though she had been
struck both deaf and blind. It was incredible that she had forgotten but she
had been so co caught up in her private turmoil of hate and dread and that
avid, unwilling desire that she had forgotten its original cause. But now she
had remembered, far too late.

         
The body was still there, in the cellar.

         
An outrider had been sent ahead to warn the next religious
house of the procession‘s coming. It was the custom for travellers across this
bleak region to stay at night at the convents and monasteries that were
scattered so liberally across its ungenerous soil, and the knowledge that each
day‘s travel would end at one such, between stone walls and in a sort of
seclusion, had soothed Juana. But now, as she descended from the carriage in
the early dusk, the quiet of the convent seemed sinister, the black-robed
sisters like so many carrion crows. Juana‘s thoughts were full of pursuit and
death and the bodies of unburied men as she allowed Jaime to lead her into the
long, empty refectory.

         
He sat by her as they ate and she knew that they must they
must have talked together, but she had no idea of what was said to her or what
she said. Her thought circled obsessively round Tristan. She had glimpsed him
briefly when he had dismounted to help with the carriage horses, and she knew
that his place was in the convent kitchens with the rest of the servants. Yet
somehow she must manage to speak to him that night before she could sleep, and
learn whether he had disposed of the Duque‘s dead body.

         
― You are not listening to me, Juana.‖ There
was a jealous note in Jaime‘s voice that dragged her thoughts back to the
present. ―Are you regretting the loss of your rich husband after all‖?

         
Not in the way he meant it, Juana thought, but she
regretted his loss nonetheless. She shook her head vehemently. ―No,
never! If you had seen him, you would know the wealth of the Indies could not
make a woman love him. Michaela —' She half-choked on the name and fell silent.

         
`What has become of Michaela? Has she left you at last? My
mother always said that such a wanton would be bound to desert you one day,
although your father said something about sending her with you because she had
proved herself worthy of trust. Did she find herself a lover and elect to
stay?'