The Flesh and the Devil (42 page)

         
The handkerchief land in her lap, a soft crumple of linen, ‗Wipe
it clean. What harm? I shall not die if you do not, and you are wasting your
enmity – save it for a better occasion, when it might kill me indeed.‘

         
Her eyes lifted then, dark and mutinous, to meet his hard
green gaze. Then she said raggedly, ‗You lesson me well in hating. Here.‘
She caught up the handkerchief and began to dab at the small star-shaped wound
him fingers that she strove to keep steady. Fixing her eyes on the smooth
expanse of gold-dusted skin beneath the pad, she said, ‗Eugenio once told
me that you were the worst enemy I could earn myself.‘

         
‗A compliment,‘ he agreed tonelessly. His hooded eyes
lifted from her averted face, and his voice sharpened. ‗Yes, Ramon?‘

         
The dripping coachman peered in at them, hesitated, and
then visibly decided to ignore Juana‘s presence. ‗What was all that
about, Tristán? Why was the young one trying to make you fight him?‘

         
‗We disagreed about the road we should take, and now
I think he has resolved to make way by himself. You Spaniards are something
hot-headed.‘

         
Tristán‘s a breath drew in sharply as the handkerchief
pressed down viciously on his wound.

         
‗It is little enough to fight over, but then . . .
the young . . .‘ the driver allowed his voice to trail away fatalistically, his
doleful expression accentuated by the raindrops that rolled steadily down his
long face. ‗He did not hurt you?‘

         
‗A scratch. But listen, Ramon, we cannot travel as we
are without him. When the rain eases I want you to take the carriage on to
Turon without me –

         
from there you can go north-east with the others and reach
Zuccaro that way.‘

         
The driver‘s blue jaw fell. ‗North-east? Then why
have we been going south? And who is to protect the lady if you do not come?‘

         
‗The lady travels with me.‘

         
There was a moment‘s silence, and Juana‘s hand rested
motionless against Tristán‘s throat. Then Ramon‘s lugubrious-looking face split
into a broad grin.

         
‗You are trying to make sport of me, eh? You are
jesting?‘ There was no response, and he sobered slowly. ‗So that was why
you changed the disposing of the luggage, was it?‘

         
‗You will travel faster with a lighter load,‘ was the
level response.

         
‗That‘s true! I‘ll tell you –‗ a horny finger
wagged – ‗give me a horse to catch up with the others and you can steal
this accursed carriage as well.‘

         
Tristán laughed, one of his short, sudden laughs, and his
hand came up to imprison Juana‘s rigid fingers and hold them close against his
throat. She could fell the vibration up her arm like the exquisite pain of a
touch of fire.

         
‗It would not serve.‘ He responded. ‗I might
escape the theft of Senor de Arrelanos‘s daughter with a fine, but to steal the
Duque de Valenzuela‘s carriage would mean‘ heading for sure. Besides, the
senor‘s wrath might be more quickly assuaged if he thinks I have taken her for
pure love. That is well now.‘

         
Juana winced from the slight, deceitful gentling of his
tone as he spoke to her, and wrenched away her hand. He was taunting her, she
thought; playing a double game that would convince the gloomy driver of his
sincerity while he appeared to mock his own reckless action in stealing himself
a bride. Ramon was nibbling his moustache, his eyes frankly curious.

         
‗Where do you mean to take her?‘

         
‗If you do not know then you cannot tell, and I will
not –‗ Tristán‘s voice grew cynical – ‗burden your conscience with
knowing. A little further along this road there is a fall of scree and a couple
of caves – you can tell the senorita‘s father truly that you left us there and
do not know what has become of us. We shall do well enough, tell him so from
me, and add – ‗long fingers tilted Juana‘s chin, and he spoke the next
words directly to her – ‗that this time his daughter has chosen her own
path.‘

         
The rain endured for almost an hour, and in all that time
Juana could not trust herself to speak. Soldier must feel so, she found herself
thinking, when they had an arm or a lag blown off in battle: they knew that
them limb was no longer there, but their minds could not envisage the loss;
they had no knowledge of what it was to live without it, and did not understand
what the loss would mean to them. Now she had been torn with equal abruptness
from the one faith that had sustained her; that for all his arrogant mastery of
her body, she hated Felipe Tristán.

         
Her fear had not been for Jaime when she had thought they
must fight, but for her husband; and her anger had been mere reaction because
his danger was past, leaving her deeply shaken. It was not hatred that had made
her touch such a slight wound so cautiously but a wave of helpless, enveloping
tenderness that made her want to weep. She wanted to stay with, she
acknowledged silently; there could be no pretence that she had kept silent
before the coachman in order to save the man‘s skin.

         
She watched, white-faced and silent, while Tristán packed
saddlebags with bare necessities for travel, together with what remained of
food from the castillo. Once, sensing her scrutiny, be paused and looked up,
meeting her eyes across the carriage.

         
‗It is not far to Turon,‘ he said with a trace of his
old irony. ‗Ramon will not starve after we part.‘

         
Then, when she did not speak, he resumed his task with
unhurried efficiency. A handful of jewellery and a small bag of gold from the
dowry-chest joined the rest, and as Tristán relocked the chest Juana gave an
exclamation of uncontrollable surprise.

         
‗What is it?‘ He was buckling the saddlebag, but the
question came sharply, as if he were more intent on her than on what he was
doing.

         
‗I thought you would take more of my dowry than that,
you took such trouble to gain it.‘

         
The long fingers paused, then calmly threaded the strap
through the buckle and tested its security with a brisk tug. ‗If I need
more, I can hold you to ransom and get greater sums from your father. Just now
I have no mind to be robbed in my turn.‘

         
‗Are you proud of your theft?‘ she demanded fiercely.

         
‗Would you have me ashamed of gaining what I wanted?‘

         
The derisive note in his voice silenced her. At last she
said, almost against her will, ‗You might get a greater reward for my
safe return.‘

         
‗That would be once for all.‘ He spoke without
expression. ‗I prefer the means for a revenue – that, and my wife‘s
company.‘

         
With an incoherent exclamation Juana turned away her head,
just as the carriage lurched and Ramon‘s dripping head appeared at the window.

         
‗Hey! The rain is over, all but a spattering. We go
now?‘

         
For a moment longer Tristán stared at Juana‘s averted
profile, and then he said curtly, ‗Yes, we are ready. Once you have left
us you should reach Turon before nightfall.‘

         
‗And will you take any horse with you?‘

         
‗The bay and the Arab. The bay is mine, and it would
be unmannerly for the senorita to leave behind so rare a parting gift from the
Duque.‘

         
He did not say which Duque, Juana noticed, hating his calm
fluency. She heard the creak of the carriage as Ramon swung himself back into
motion, lurching forward through the fresh, clinging mud. The sky, she saw, was
as bright now as if that fierce rain had never been.

         
Tristán was right, the caves were close. Within minutes, it
seemed, the carriage had ratted to a halt, and Juana found herself gazing at
the dark rustcoloured scree with a sense of fatalism. Of course he had been
right, she thought, he would never lose any advantage through ignorance of what
might lie ahead, and he had a soldier‘s eyes for landmarks. Unlike her – sucked
blindly into a vortex that threatened to drown her – he knew exactly where he
was going.

         
The Arab horse was quickly untethered from the carriage,
and with uncanny swiftness Tristán unloaded the saddlebags. Then, with a shout
of farewell to Ramon, he slapped the rump of the nearest carriage-horse. The
driver yelled back something that Juana could not hear, and then the whole
equipage surged forward and forward and vanished round the bend in the muddy
track.

         
Afterwards Juana was to look back at the night in the cave
with a feeling of wonder that she did not betray herself to Tristán. Even while
she longed to lose her terrors on turning to him for reassurance, she could not
help the conviction that he had planned that she should do just that. By tearing
her with such brutal suddenness from the last familiar things she had known, he
sought only to humble her pride. So she clung to her aloofness and silence as
if they were weapons against him and herself, and waged a desperate battle to
seem as hostile towards him as she had ever been.

         
She was only too well aware of what he would say if he
guessed her thoughts; the green eyes would narrow in icy mockery, the crisp
voice harden in amused disdain. ‗You will come to like the deed, if not
the doer,‘ he had told her cynically, and she had retreated in disgust from the
imputations; but now she was sick for him, trembling in excitement instead of
abhorrence. She could only pray that he would not see the difference, would not
realize too soon that she had learned at last to want him, and even worse –

         
‗There thorn twigs are still too wet, we must put the
rest to dry before they will burn.‘

         
Tristán glanced up from where he knelt beside the
smouldering fire that he was tending, his gaze piercing across the smoke-filled
space between them. She looked away quickly, then shivered as a high, animal
call came from outside; it reminded her of Bartolomé‘s cackling laugh and made
her glance nervously towards the mouth of the cave.

         
‗He will not come back, Juana.‘ The dry voice made
her start uncontrollably, but then Tristán added, ‗He must be halfway to
your father‘s house by now, and his heroism and my villainy will have grown
with every step.‘

         
‗Oh – Jaime!‘ She swallowed an urge to laugh
hysterically; nothing had been further from her thoughts. ‗I was not
thinking of him – I do remember failure.‘

         
Failure of understanding, she was thinking; all her life
she had loved a Jaime who did not exist, just as he had loved the girl she had
striven to become for his sake, and not her innermost self. Now that illusion
of love had faded as though it had never been, and the reality –

         
The reality was watching her coldly, with eyes as steady
and baleful as a cat‘s. ‗So you hoped he would make you my widow? I must
have a care not to give you such an opportunity again. I have no mind to die to
please a woman. Did the last exploit give you a taste for murder, then?‘

         
Unbidden, the picture flashed before her eyes of a
sprawled, gaping figure lying in a pool of wine on the cellar floor, and she
gagged. ‗No! I did not want – I never asked you to – ‗

         
‗I saw your face when you looked at him, that was
eloquence enough.‘

         
She put her hand to her head, imagining how she had looked;
she had thought he enjoyed the spectacle of her disgust; as Eugenio had done,
yet he had ended so much of it, at least, as hung on Bartolomé‘s life. And got
his reward for it, her mind added, in her dowry – and in her, for as long as it
pleased him to keep her. She remembered him saying, I
used my sword on one
or two when they couldnot scream any more,
 
and wondered whether he would dispose of her
so lightly when he had his full measure of revenge.

         
‗What will you do now?‘ She heard her own voice from
an interminable distance.

         
‗Run. Quit the country.‘ He added ironically as she
stiffened, ‗In your company, of course.‘

         
‗Of course. You do not quit a debt for convenience‘s
sake,‘ she quoted savagely, and saw his face tighten.

         
‗No.‘ There was an odd silence before he said
deliberately, ‗Try to sleep now. It is a long ride to Villenos, and if we
are to get there tomorrow we must start bedtimes. And take off that cage you
are wearing – the man who fashioned it cannot have intended you kneel in it,
let alone lie down in it or sit a horse.‘

         
Juana‘s hands went defensively to the heavy frame of her
farthingale. ‗My gown is too ling without it,‘ she protested.

         
‗I have a knife that will shorten it. You need not
fear that my friends in Villenos will concern themselves with fashion – they
seldom see one of your kind except to trade with, and count themselves honoured
by that. They are poor folk, like me – ‗ Tristán‘s voice had the sudden
thrust of a blade – ‗save that I am not content to remain as they are.‘

         
Seeing that he was about to rise and help her, Juana turned
her back quickly and began to loosen the web of laces that held the bulky frame
in place under her spreading skirts. As she tugged at the knots, she asked, ‗What
is Villenos; a city or a town? And why must we go there?‘