The Shores of Spain (37 page)

“We
have
to go.”

Interesting.
She reached out to brush a lock of hair back from Alejandro’s forehead, but he flinched away. She tried again, more slowly, and brushed the hair from the boy’s forehead, then laid her hand against his cheek. “I’m not going to hit you. Not ever.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

Was that something he foreknew? Or was he just giving her the answer he thought she wanted? In a way she was relieved he was here. If she didn’t have him to look after, she would be out of her mind with worry over Joaquim. Alejandro served as an excellent distraction.

CHAPTER 33

                   T
HURSDAY
,
30
A
PRIL
1903
; L
LEIDA                   

J
oaquim woke again, rising out of dreams of confused images. He lay on a hard bed, narrow and smelling of musty old stone. His head ached, his right arm felt tight and confined, and there was something about his left wrist. He lifted his left arm to look at it, only to have it jerk to a stop after only a few inches.

His left hand was cuffed to the iron frame of the bed.

“Shit,”
he said under his breath.

He wasn’t given to cussing. Not aloud, at least. So he lifted his free arm to cross himself contritely and saw a bandage wrapped about his right wrist. He stared at it dully, wondering where it had come from. He didn’t recall injuring that arm, but it felt tight and achy. “Marina?”

A dark form came closer to him, a woman bearing a lamp—definitely not his wife. She dragged a chair closer and set her lamp on a table beyond his reach. She turned the lamp up, and for the first time Joaquim got a good view of his location.

The ceiling above him was stone. The walls were stone. The room had only a trio of narrow beds and the single small table. Joaquim turned his head to one side to take in his captor. A woman of
middle years with dark hair going gray, she wore the garb of a nurse, a tidy white apron and cap over a somber black dress. She regarded him with curiosity in her hazel eyes. “How are you feeling, Mr. Ferreira?”

Joaquim chuckled, but that quickly turned into a cough. The woman helped him sit up and held a tin cup to his lips. The water soothed his throat. He hadn’t realized it was so dry. He took the cup in his free hand and quickly downed the remaining water. “I’m not Alexandre Ferreira.”

She smiled gently. “Of course not, but they don’t know that. What is your name?”

Her accent sounded Andalusian, not Castilian. “Joaquim Tavares. Where am I?”

“I suspect you don’t recall much. You’re in Lleida, in the Morra.”

Lleida was the town with the prison, but that last word sounded suspiciously like death. “What’s the Morra?”

She sighed. “It’s a separate prison, an old one built in the cellars of the town hall itself. The sirenas keep special prisoners here.”

Special?
He looked at his companion more closely. The hair pulled back from her face had a wiry curl to it, and her wide cheekbones gave her an exotic look. He would put her age between forty and fifty. “Are you a prisoner as well?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “I’m called Prieto. I’m the healer here.”

He glanced down at his bandaged wrist. “What happened to me?”

“They branded you, I’m afraid,” she said, “while you were drugged. That’s why you can’t remember.”

Branded? He tugged at the bandage with his cuffed hand, setting off another wave of pain.

“Stop,” she ordered in a voice of authority. “You’ll tear the wound.”

He went still. “Why would they . . . ?”

She unbuttoned her white sleeve and showed him her right forearm. An old scar marked her arm just above the wrist, pale against her dark skin—a B. “So that all know my sin,” she said.
“Bruja
.
”

That was close enough to the Portuguese word that he recognized it. They had marked him as a
witch
? He wished Marina was here to help him with his execrable Spanish, and then unwished it. He didn’t want her here. “How do they know I’m a witch?”

“Alejandro is a witch, so you must be.”

He nearly choked again—oh yes, they’d assumed Alejandro was his son. “I’ve never even seen his mother.”

She gazed at him levelly. “Yes, I know. But there’s an incredible likeness between you and the boy, especially around the eyes. And you were defending him from the Mossos. What else were they to assume? Don’t rub,” the woman said. “You’ll disturb the poultice and tear the skin.”

He realized he’d set his fingers over the aching spot on his wrist. He jerked them away. “Thank you for reminding me, Miss Prieto.”

“You are leverage,” she said in answer to his question. “As they do not have Alejandro to force Leandra’s obedience, they will use you.”

He hadn’t quite caught all those words, but inferred their meaning from context. It didn’t bode well for him. Being used as leverage couldn’t be pleasant. “Is Leandra here? In this prison?”

“Yes. I’m not sure if she will leave it alive this time, but you will. You’re here for a purpose.”

“A purpose?”

She nodded. “When they discover that Leandra truly doesn’t know you, they’ll take you to the main prison. You’ll receive more instructions there.”

“Instructions?” He heard footsteps on the stone of the dark hallway outside. “What does that mean?”

She leaned closer and whispered, “Please forgive us, but we are desperate.”

“Prieto!” A guard dressed in a gray uniform stood outside the bars. “Piedad’s waiting on you.”

The healer rose and gazed down at Joaquim. “One of the guards
will unchain you so you can use the chamber pot,” she said loudly enough to be heard in the hallway. “Don’t make a mess of my infirmary.”

With that she left, locking the door behind her. Joaquim regarded those iron bars, mind whirling. What was happening here? If he was to receive instructions, then surely they had a plan for him. That meant they’d known
he
would be captured in Alejandro’s place.

He stared up at the stone ceiling. What had become of Alejandro? And Adler? What was Marina doing? Was she safe? Joaquim closed his eyes to fight back bitter tears. He was cowardly, being more concerned for his own fate than his wife’s. How could he not have thought of her first?

He covered his face with his hand and prayed that God would protect her through this trial. He felt better afterward, that first flush of anguish eased.

He hoped she would think to send a telegram to Lady Ferreira. His foster mother would, no doubt, swoop down and retrieve Marina from Barcelona. Or the American consulate general could help her. He doubted they could get him out of a Spanish prison, but they could instruct Marina in how to get home safely. Even the Portuguese consulate could do that for her.

Marina was resourceful, even if she doubted her courage. She had found a way to escape the islands and find her father in Portugal. She’d made a new life for herself. Even the day he’d met her, she’d been fighting the man who’d attacked her. She would figure out what to do.

And he would figure out a way out of this place.

Or perhaps, sooner or later, justice would prevail.

He nearly laughed at that thought.
It so often does not
.

A burly guard appeared at the door, unlocked it, and set his lamp inside. He looked at Joaquim and hefted a set of keys. “I’m going to unlock your manacle so you can piss. You try anything, I’ll shoot you. Understand?”

*   *   *

M
arina had spent a mostly sleepless night. She had
tried
to sleep. She wasn’t doing Joaquim any good by tossing and turning. But sleep had eluded her, so she’d tugged and pulled at the maze of problems that surrounded her.

She’d dismissed the idea of going to the police. The Portuguese consulate wouldn’t be any more help than the Americans, she suspected. They would urge her to return to the Golden City. Mr. Adler was in the hospital and wasn’t in any shape to be helpful either. And while Pinter did have guards out collecting information, she wasn’t going to wait for results.

Marina picked the smallest of their bags and in it placed only two outfits and as few toiletries as possible, as well as Alejandro’s spare clothing. She moved all but a handful of the paper money to her luggage and, after a moment’s consideration, Alejandro’s book as well. It might add weight, but it pleased Alejandro.

“Where are we going?” Alejandro asked from the doorway to the bathroom.

“We’re going back to Terrassa,” she said.

He didn’t argue. He came and sat on the bed while she finished packing.

“Will she help us?” Marina asked. “The marquesa?”

Alejandro’s eyes took on a faraway look that reminded her of Joaquim when he was trying to find someone. “Maybe. Not sure.”

Well, that meant the woman
might
. Marina had to figure out the right way to get the marquesa to do her bidding. She could touch the old woman, but her
call
didn’t work as well on females, and thus might only annoy the marquesa. No, she had to find some other way to persuade the woman to help Joaquim. “We’ll stop and get some breakfast at the station,” she said to Alejandro. “Will that be soon enough?”

He nodded, so she put her mother’s journal on top of the bag’s contents and closed it up. Then she and Alejandro left the hotel room,
locking the door firmly behind them. The room was paid up for a couple of weeks, so it should still be theirs when they returned. She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer that it wouldn’t take that long.

The telegraph office was close to the hotel, so they walked there first. She sent a short message to Lady Ferreira stating that Joaquim was in trouble and that she would send more information later. She hoped that by the time
later
came, she’d have more to say. Then they headed back toward the line of cabs waiting patiently at the edge of the Plaça de Catalunya. One of the drivers caught her eye and she drew Alejandro in that direction, but a hand on her arm stopped her.

Startled, Marina jerked away, putting Alejandro behind her.

The woman who’d touched her stood with hands held wide now. “I mean no harm, Miss Arenias.”

The woman might not be wearing that same shirtwaist Marina had admired before, but she recognized the woman’s narrow face now. It was the woman she’d seen earlier, both in Barcelona and at the train station at Madrid. But she hadn’t used the name Arenias in either of those places. A prickle of fear spread down Marina’s spine. “What do you want?”

“I was hired by Jovita Paredes to watch over your safety. I’ve been following you since you left the islands.”

Marina reached behind her blindly and Alejandro’s hand slid into hers. “Why?”

“I’m here to collect evidence, not to interfere with you, but when I saw your mate was taken, I knew I had to offer my aid. I can’t help find him—that’s beyond my assignment—but if you need to get anything back to the islands, I can see that it reaches there safely.”

Marina thought of the journal in her bag with its encrypted message. She hadn’t worked out the whole cipher yet, and wanted to finish it herself. On the other hand, if she handed it over, she could concentrate her whole effort on finding her husband.

But she didn’t know if she could trust anyone her aunt had hired. “I’ll consider it.”

The woman seemed disappointed, but didn’t argue. “I’m at the Gran Hotel on the Rambla del Centro,” she said, “if you need my help, come there.”

Marina regarded her silently for a moment, fixing that face in her memory. “I may do that,” she said, and quickly drew Alejandro to the waiting cab. Once they’d settled, she glanced back, but the woman had already gone on her way.

Unnerved, Marina kept Alejandro’s hand in hers until they were safely seated on the train. He warily eyed the other passengers in the car, and then settled back with his arms across his chest. There weren’t any others sitting close enough to them to overhear, so Marina decided to pry more information out of the boy. “Will you tell me about the Vilaró?”

Alejandro’s mouth pursed. “He was nice to me. I gave him my bread.”

“Why?”

“You’re supposed to give him bread.”

Perhaps the Canaries weren’t feeding him, and Alejandro had been slipping him food. “Why is he in the prison? Is he a witch?”

As the train lurched into motion, Alejandro shook his head. “He’s a fairy.”

He’d delivered that in a perfectly serious tone. About all she knew of fairies was that they were rare now, and kept their distance from humans. Beyond that? In stories, they granted wishes to sailors who pulled stones out of fishes’ bellies or made princesses out of scullery maids. To be honest, she’d never given them much thought, as she’d never expected to meet one.

There were people who didn’t believe sereia existed. Given, her people’s islands were the last free colony of sereia known, but there were the Canaries, and stories about other sereia throughout the world. Unfortunately, most of the smaller groups of sereia hadn’t had enough males to breed true and eventually died off. Their children
by human mates had, over the generations, become more and more human until the very traits that made them sereia bred out. That was one reason the oligarchy on Quitos was so adamantly against allowing humans on the island. Quitos was seen as
pure
.

“Alejandro, how many Canaries are at the prison?”

He gave her a strange look.

Marina wished she could shake answers out of him. Either it was a question he wasn’t supposed to answer, or . . . she’d asked the wrong question.

She opened the bag of meat pies she’d purchased outside the train station. They weren’t the kind she was accustomed to, more like a circle of soft bread folded in half over the stuffing. They smelled tasty anyway. She handed one wrapped in paper to Alejandro, and he immediately stuffed half into his mouth.

Once he’d eaten two of the pies, she tried again. “The women who run the prison. How many are there?”