The Siege

by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  * * *

  * A French flintlock cavalry pistol first used circa 1806. Year 13 refers to years post the French Revolution.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In recent days the winter westerlies have brought hazy sunsets to the city. The sky has long since veered from red to bluish gray, thence to black. On the bay, flags have been hauled down, and the still shapes of the anchored ships have melted into the darkness. These early hours of night bring an impatient dew, leaving railings damp, cobblestones slippery and the ground glistening under the lone, ghostly light—a lantern on the corner of the Calle del Baluarte and the Calle San Francisco. It does little to dispel the shadows, but is surprising, like an altar lamp in a dark, abandoned church.

  “Nonsense, I won’t hear of you walking home alone! Santos!”

  “Yes, Doña Lolita?”

  “Fetch a lantern and escort the señora.”

  At her doorway, a woolen shawl about her shoulders, her hair plaited into a coil at the base of her neck, Lolita Palma bids goodnight to Curra Vilches. Her friend protests that she is perfectly capable of walking on her own for the short distance to her house in Pedro Conde, opposite the Customs House. This is Cádiz, and at her age she has no need of an escort. Really, a fan to swat flies is all she needs!

  “Don’t annoy me, my dear,” she objects, raising the wide lapels of her cape. “And don’t trouble poor Santos: he is having his dinner!”

  “Not another word,” Lolita says. “With things as they are, I won’t have you walking around on your own.”

  “What twaddle! I’m telling you, I’m off.”

  “Absolutely not … Santos!”

  Curra Vilches insists, but Lolita refuses to let her leave. It is late, and the rumors about women being murdered in the city have everyone on edge. With a killer on the loose, this is no time to stand on ceremony. The authorities maintain that the rumors are merely fabrications, and there have been no reports in the newspapers; but Cádiz is a parish pump, and the word on the street is that the murders are real, the police are unable to catch the killer and the military have gagged the newspapers, trampling over the freedom of the press under the pretext that there is a war on and it would create widespread panic. Everyone knows that.

  The manservant returns carrying a tinplate oil lamp, and Curra Vilches finally sees reason. She has spent the evening at Lolita’s house helping her out. The last day of every month in Cádiz is traditionally reserved for stock-taking and balancing the books, meaning that offices and businesses are open until midnight; so, too, are currency exchanges, banks, importers and shipping agents. In a routine she inherited from her father, Lolita Palma spent the afternoon supervising the Palma e Hijos employees in the ground floor office while they did the accounts; Curra kept her company, oversaw the domestic chores and tended to her mother.

  “She seemed in good form. Given her condition.”

  “Go on, go. Your husband will be wanting to have dinner.”

  “Him?” Curra Vilches adopts an insolent pose, hands on her hips beneath her cape. “With things as they are in Cádiz, he is up to his neck in correspondence and account books just like you … He barely notices I’m there. This would be the perfect day to commit adultery. For married women in Cádiz, the last day of every month is an extenuating circumstance … any confessor would make allowances.”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous, Curra,” Lolita says, laughing.

  “Mock if you must. But what doctors prescribe for days such as these is a lieutenant in the grenadiers, a naval officer or something … a man who knows nothing about currency exchanges or double-entry bookkeeping, but brings a flush to your cheeks and has you fanning yourself whenever he is within shooting range. With elegant whiskers and tight-fitting breeches.”

  “Don’t be so vulgar.”

  “I am nothing of the kind, my dear. It is you who is being dull. I tell you, if I were single and in your position, it would be a very different story. I wouldn’t spend my life with half a dozen penpushers shut up in some gloomy office, or pressing lettuce leaves into albums.”

  “Go on, get out of here … Santos, light the way for Doña Curra.”

  The lamp lights the pavement in front of Curra Vilches, who wraps herself up in her cape and walks behind the old manservant.

  “You’re wasting away, my dear,” she says, turning back one last time. “Take my word for it … you’re throwing your life away.”

  Leaning against the gate, Lolita Palma laughs into the darkness. “Go … and be careful, you brazen hussy.”

  “Goodnight, Mother Superior!”

  Lolita walks back down the path, closing the gate behind her, and crosses between the ferns planted in large tubs in the tiled courtyard. Next to the well, a large candelabrum illuminates the arches and columns of the marble staircase leading to the upper floors and their glassed galleries. A few steps to the right, a door leads off the patio to the ground-floor offices, with another door, used for deliveries and tradesmen, opening on to the Calle de los Doblones. Here are the fine goods store, the small parlor, the main commercial office and a second office where the manager and two clerks—a junior and a bookkeeper—work by lamplight, leaning over desks strewn with copies of letters, account books, bills and invoices. When Lolita comes in, stepping around the charcoal brazier that heats the room, they nod in greeting—she has forbidden them from standing up when she enters the office. Only Molina, the head clerk, who has been with the firm for thirty-four years, gets to his feet, coming to greet her from behind the frosted-glass panel that demarcates his workspace. He is wearing black oversleeves with ink stains, and has a goose quill tucked behind his ear.

  “I have calculated the unpaid invoices from Havana, Doña Lolita … at one and a half percent, it comes to 3,700 reales in protest charges.”

  “What are the chances we might recoup any of it?”

  “Very slight, I fear.”

  She listens to her chief clerk, careful not to let her anxiety show—just a brief frown that might be taken for concentration. Carry it forward. One more loss. Equivalent to a year’s salary for one of her employees. The weariness she feels is not simply due to the day’s work, which is not yet finished. The French blockade, the general lack of liquidity, the problems in the Americas, all these things are slowly strangling the merchants of Cádiz, despite the apparent boom in business some are experiencing due to the war. Palma e Hijos is no exception.

  “Log it in the accounts ledger. And when you have the Manchester and Liverpool invoices ready, bring them to my office.” Lolita glances around at the clerks. “Have you all eaten?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell Rosas to prepare something. Some cold meats and wine. You have twenty minutes.”

  She pushes the door to the little parlor which leads to the Calle de los Doblones, with its engravings of seascapes and its dark wooden frieze, crosses the hall and goes into the main office. Unlike the private office upstairs, which she usually uses outside business hours, this one is large and imposing, its decor unchanged since her father’s or grandfather’s time: a large desk and a bookcase, two worn leather armchairs, three model ships under glass, a framed map of the bay of Cádiz on the wall, an almanac of the Royal Company of the Philippines, an English grandfather clock, a metal map cabinet in one corner, and a thin barometer that constantly reads Stormy. On the desk—mahogany, like the rest of the furniture in the house—are a blue-glass oil lamp, a hand bell, a brass ashtray that belonged to her father, a Chinese porcelain inkstand, a portfolio and two books with marked pages: Promptuario Aritmético by Rendón and Fuentes, and The Art of Double-Entry Bookkeeping by Luque and Leyva. Lifting her skirts—she is wearing a simple brown cashmere skirt with a short jacket, allowing her to work in comfort—Lolita sits down at her desk. She rearranges her shawl about her shoulders, turns up the oil lamp and stares at the empty chair opposite. Don Emilio Sánchez Guinea was sitting there some hours ago, mid-afternoon, as they discussed the current state of affairs—whic
h, in the opinion of the heiress to Palma e Hijos (or, indeed, any clear-sighted person in Cádiz), looks uncertain. The precise term Sánchez Guinea used was harrowing.

  “People don’t seem to realize what’s happening, hija. When this war and this liberal pox is over, when we have lost the Americas for good, that will be the end of us … Political hysteria does not create business; nor does it put food on the table.”

  It was a frank and honest professional discussion. Neither of them labored under any illusions about the hard times that were to come. The complications of converting treasury bonds into cash; the sluggish flow of funds into the city; problems with investments in marine insurance; and, most of all, the difficulties for many businesses of keeping their credit, which was dependent as much on one’s reputation as it was on discretion about other people’s predicaments.

  “I’m tired of fighting, Lolita. For twenty years this city has had to deal with all the misfortunes of the world. The wars with France and with England, the upheaval in the Americas, the epidemics … Add to that a government in disarray, exorbitant taxes, the loans to the Crown and to the Cortes, the capital losses in territories occupied by the French. And now we’re being told that there are corsairs in Río de la Plata working for the rebels … Too much fighting, hija, too much disappointment. I feel old just thinking about it. I wish this madness would end, so I could retire to my finca in El Puerto—if I ever get it back … Well, I suppose it’s just a matter of patience. I only hope I will live to see it … Luckily I have my son, who is gradually taking over the helm.”

  “Miguel is a good boy, Don Emilio. Clever and hardworking.”

  The old merchant smiled sadly. “Such a shame that your father and I never managed to get the two of you …”

  The words hung in the air. Lolita smiled too, a gentle, reproachful smile. This had long been a delicate subject.

  “He is a good boy,” she said again. “Too good for me.”

  “I wish you had married him.”

  “Don’t say that. You have a wonderful daughter-in-law; you have two beautiful grandchildren and another on the way.”

  Don Emilio shook his head forlornly. “Being clever and hardworking may not be enough for us to get through this. I don’t envy him the days to come … What lies ahead for all you young people when this war is over? The world will never be the same again.”

  A silence. Sánchez Guinea smiled affectionately. “You should …”

  “Don’t start, Don Emilio.”

  “Your sister has no children, nor does it look like she will have any. If you … I don’t know.” He looked around sorrowfully. “It would be such a pity if all this … you know.”

  “If the House of Palma should end with me?”

  “You’re still a young woman.”

  Lolita raised a warning hand. She never allowed anyone, not even Don Emilio Sánchez Guinea, to venture any further on this subject. Not even her dear friend Curra Vilches.

  “Please, let’s talk about business.”

  The old merchant shifted in his seat uncomfortably. “I apologize, hija … I have no wish to interfere.”

  “You are forgiven.”

  They talked about business matters: freight, Customs duties, ships, the difficulty of opening up new markets to compensate for those lost in the Americas. Sánchez Guinea, aware that Palma e Hijos had recently begun trading with Russia, tried to sound out Lolita. Conscious of this—affection and business interests do not mix—she confined herself to the superficial details: two trips made by the frigate José Vicuña to St. Petersburg with cargoes of wine, cinchona bark and cork with a ballast of salt on the voyage out; castor oil and Siberian musk—much cheaper than that from Tonkin—on the return. Nothing that Sánchez Guinea and his son did not already know.

  “You also seem to be doing well with flour.”

  Lolita said that she had no reason to complain. Importing flour from North America—there are fifteen hundred barrels of it in warehouses at the dock—has proved a lifeline for Palma e Hijos in recent times.

  “For Russia too?”

  “Perhaps. If I can manage to ship it before it is spoiled by the damp.”

  “I wish you every success. Times are hard … just look at poor Alejandro Schmidt. He lost the Bella Mercedes and all its cargo in the shallows off Rota.”

  Lolita nodded. Obviously she had already heard. A month ago, strong headwinds and treacherous seas had forced the boat aground on the occupied French coast, where it was looted as soon as the storm passed: two hundred boxes of Chinese cinnamon, three hundred sacks of pepper from the Maluku Islands, and a thousand yards of Canton linen. It would take some time for the house of Schmidt to recover from such a loss, if indeed it ever did. In these times, when too much was sometimes risked on a single voyage, the loss of a ship could be fatal.

  “I have a business proposition that might interest you.”

  Lolita looked at Don Emilio warily. She recognized the tone. “This business—would it be done by the right hand or the left?”

  A pause. Sánchez Guinea lit a fat cigar from the oil lamp.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said eventually, narrowing his eyes with sly charm. “What I am proposing is a good venture.”

  Lolita leaned back in the leather armchair and shook her head mistrustfully. “The left hand, then,” she concluded. “As you know, I do not like to stray far from the everyday.”

  “That is what you said about the Culebra. And you see, that turned out to be an excellent business proposition … That reminds me—I don’t know whether you know, but the Tavira Tower has just hoisted a black ball. They have spotted a frigate away to windward and a cutter making its way up the coast with the west wind. Did you know?”

  “No. I have been dealing with paperwork all day.”

  “The cutter might well be ours. I assume it will round the lighthouse tonight and, if the wind doesn’t change, it should be back in the bay tomorrow morning.”

  With some effort, Lolita dismissed Pépé Lobo from her thoughts. This was neither the place nor the time, she thought.

  “Let us talk about something else, Don Emilio. The Culebra is a corsair ship with a Letter of Marque and Reprisal. Smuggling is a very different matter.”

  “And yet half our rivals engage in it without any compunction.”

  “That does not matter. There was a time when you yourself …”

  She fell silent, out of respect. Sánchez Guinea stared at the gray ash forming at the end of his cigar.

  “You’re right, hija. There was a time when I would have had no truck with such business. Neither smuggling nor slave trading, although your grandfather Enrique was happy to trade in Negro slaves … But none of that matters. Times have changed … we have to adapt. What with the French and the greed of our own authorities, I am not about to allow myself to be fleeced.” He leaned forward slightly, ash falling on to the mahogany desk. “What I am talking about …”

  Lolita Palma gently pushed the ashtray toward him. “I don’t wish to know.”

  Sánchez Guinea, cigar clenched between his teeth, looked at her intently. Persuasively.

  “It is more or less honest: seven hundred hundredweight of cocoa, two hundred boxes of cigars and a hundred and fifty bales of leaf tobacco. All of it left in Santa María cove at night … An English xebec will bring it from Gibraltar.”

  “What about the City Hall, what about Customs?”

  “That is by the way. Almost.”

  She shook her head again, affectionately. Gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “This is contraband, pure and simple. Barefaced smuggling. And it cannot be done in secret, Don Emilio.”

  “Who says it will be? This is Cádiz, remember. Officially, we will have nothing to do with it. Everything has already been organized. All the hinges are oiled, so nothing will squeak. There is no problem.”

  “Then why do you need me?”

  “To share the financial risk. And the profits, of course.”

&nbs
p; “I’m not interested. And it is not because of the risks, Don Emilio. I know that as far as you are concerned …”

  Sánchez Guinea leaned back, finally resigned to her decision. He gazed sadly at the pristine ashtray, gleaming against the dark wood, burnished by the touch of three generations.

  “I know. Don’t worry, hija … I know.”

  Through the closed window, a fleeting sound of voices comes from the Calle de los Doblones—young men from La Viña or La Caleta talking and laughing on their way to a fandango in some tavern in El Boquete, a few notes played on a guitar. Then the night and the street fall silent again. Alone in her office, Lolita Palma stares at the empty chair on the far side of the desk. She can still remember her old family friend’s crestfallen air as he got up and walked to the door; she can still remember every word of their conversation. She cannot stop picturing Schmidt’s Bella Mercedes, grounded in the shallows near Rota, its cargo looted by the French. Palma e Hijos would find it difficult to recover from such a blow. These days, they take a risk with every ship and every crossing, at the mercy of corsairs and the fickle moods of the sea.

  Molina, the chief clerk, knocks then pops his head round the door.

  “Excuse me, Doña Lolita. I have brought the invoices for Manchester and Liverpool.”