The Guardian of Secrets and Her Deathly Pact

by Jana Petken

  Jack thanked her and then spoke almost as though it were to himself, a verbalised thought. “I am a professor at Glasgow University, and I talk endlessly about the history of the world. Now I have the chance to see history unfold before my very eyes, and that is a wondrous thing.”

  He astounded her with the depth of his knowledge about the town and told her that he knew everything about everything from the past, not because he was a teacher but because the past fascinated him.

  “If we don’t know who we were or where we came from, how do we know who we are, what we will become, and where we will go to?”

  He made her laugh with his quick wit, but she also admired him because of the way he brought his stories to life with his lilting Scottish accent and animated facial expressions. She never tired of listening to grand, exaggerated accounts of some of the most famous and notorious personalities in history, and she began, unconsciously at first, to look forward to their time together.

  For weeks, they worked long and hard through dark nights and bleak sunrises. Jack doubled up as an orderly and ambulance driver, and María attended to the injured in the triage room, prioritising the injured into severe and not severe. María could do nothing for the dead who lay under bloodied covers in orderly rows outside on the grassy verge, she told herself; that was Jack’s job. She saw very little of Lucia, who now spent most of her time in the makeshift operating theatres and wards that were no more than rough tents with dirt flooring. Sometimes the women did get the chance to chat or drink coffee together, but those times were rare, and as the weeks passed into months, Jack McFadden became María’s closest friend and confidante.

  María told Jack about her parents, whom she hadn’t written to for over two weeks. She also told him about Marta’s death and her two brothers who were both fighting, omitting Miguel’s shameful involvement with the enemy, and took great delight in describing La Glorieta in detail.

  It was late at night when the orderlies brought in a truckload of injured. María sifted through them, attending only to those who had a chance of survival. It was the only way they could deal with the vast number of casualties. The doctors, who also stressed that they wanted to save lives, told her many times not to waste time on those who could not be saved.

  Amongst the rows of the injured waiting to be seen, she came across an Englishman whispering ‘Mum’ repeatedly.

  She could see from her first quick glance that the young man wasn’t going to make it, and she almost passed him by, but something in his eyes compelled her to stop and return to his side. She knelt beside him on the ground and held his hand. A bullet had pierced his lungs, and he blew tiny bubbles of blood and saliva that trickled out of his mouth and streamed across his cheek. María asked him his name, and he smiled, his eyes bright with pain.

  “Peter,” he told her. “My name is Peter Butcher.”

  María gripped his hand tighter and then loosened it. She was afraid to ask the question, but if she didn’t, she would never know for sure. She leaned closer, wiping his bloodied mouth as she did so, and whispered softly in his ear.

  “Do you know Merrill Farm, in Kent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your grandfather … is he Tom Butcher?”

  “Yes, he is,” he told her, coughing up more blood. “Merrill Farm is my home.”

  “Peter, I know of your family. I’ll get word to them, I promise.”

  “Thank you …” He smiled again, drawing his last breath.

  María looked at the peacefulness of his face. He was only a young boy, too young to die so far from home, too young to die at all.

  She worked with Peter Butcher on her mind the whole time. She couldn’t get his sweet young face out of her thoughts, and it was making her irritable and unable to concentrate. She would have to tell her mother, and she in turn would have the difficult and sad task of informing Peter’s parents. She would make sure that she wrote the letter when she finished her shift, no matter what time it ended.

  When her shift finally ended, she was true to her word, quickly writing the letter to her mother before settling down on top of the thin straw mattress, sighing luxuriously and blotting everything else out but her need to sleep. The bell rang just as she dozed amongst the noisy thoroughfare. She hated that sound, she thought, grumbling like an old washerwoman, as it signalled the imminent arrival of more dead, dying, and wounded.

  Inside her head, she screamed. She had worked for almost two days, with only short breaks that had totalled no more than six hours. She tried to remain calm, as they’d been sworn to do by all the doctors she’d ever met, but she was sure she couldn’t bring herself to look at any more dead and bloodied men or listen to their dying prayers.

  She pulled her aching body out of the bed. She would have to go back to triage just in case they needed extra nurses; they usually did. She bit her lip and suddenly thought about Carlos. She would pay any price just to have him hold her, take her away from this hell, and love her until she slept peacefully in his arms, but it had been almost a year since she’d seen him. She also thought about England and the green peaceful fields her mother had so often described, almost wishing now that she’d gone with her. She wanted to be anywhere but here. She’d done enough, she thought, pulling on her dirty blouse and knowing that she would go back in regardless.

  She saw Jack McFadden walking sure-footedly and cradling a wounded man in his arms. When he saw her, he seemed to know what she was thinking.

  “Lass, meet me outside as soon as you finish here.”

  “María, get some sleep,” the doctor told her from the other side of the room. “You’re no good to us looking like a dead cat. Go on. We can manage without you for a few hours.”

  Jack leaned against a parked ambulance, and her tears fell almost as soon as he came into view. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stay strong any longer. She wanted and needed to cry. How else could she let go of all the horror surrounding her? She smiled through her tears and allowed him to take her in his arms.

  “Jack, I’m so tired,” she sobbed. “I don’t think I can do this anymore. I just want my mother.” She sobbed even louder. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, I’ll be twenty three and I feel like an old woman.”

  “Come on, María. Come for a wee walk and clear your head before you try to sleep again. I know it’s hard but don’t cry, lassie. You’ll bung up your pretty wee nose. And we don’t want to looking all red and puffy for your birthday, do we? ”

  María smiled for the first time. Just listening to his voice made her feel better. “Oh, Jack, I saw someone tonight from my mother’s home town, a young boy. He died.”

  “I’m sorry. What can I say to make you feel better?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing to say. God, I’m so tired of all of this, all this death. She sobbed again. “I think I’ll go lie down. I’m too exhausted to walk another step.”

  “Come on now, a busy mind never sleeps well. Walk with me a bit; it’ll do you good. I’ll tell you one of my stories.”

  She smiled. Jack was right. She couldn’t sleep now even if she tried.

  They walked for a while, keeping close to the tents, and then sat in silence in a deep ditch of dried-out mud that was hard and cracked like veins. María cried and threw herself into Jack’s tree-trunk arms. Jack put his hands on her shoulders and gently massaged the back of her neck. She moaned softly. She needed that so much. It felt so good. She closed her eyes and imagined that Carlos, not Jack, was the one with his hands on her body, giving her all the delicious sensations now coursing through her. It was Carlos’s touch, soothing and gentle, on her skin. It was Carlos’s fingers brushing lightly through her hair, taking out the jagged pins and letting it flow freely down her back. It was Carlos kissing her hard on the mouth, probing her lips with his tongue, and it was Carlos whispering, “I love you, María.”

  She knew she should stop Jack, but instead she allowed him to continue searching her body’s secrets. His hands cupped her breasts, and his
mouth followed, nibbling her erect nipples. He then lifted her skirt and began stroking her inner thighs, and she felt herself drift away into another world, where only pleasure and love existed. Jack soon slipped inside her, and she moaned with pleasure and then moved with him in rhythmic silence. Carlos and the war were forgotten; only Jack and her pleasure existed …

  Afterwards, when Jack left her at the door of her hut, the thought struck her that instead of feeling guilty about what she’d just done, she actually felt liberated and even grateful to have found a moment of sheer bliss in the hellish world she was living in. She was not a loose woman or a republican whore, something her brother Miguel would have called her. It had been a beautiful, pleasurable experience that had reminded her that life was still worth fighting for, and that love could not be broken just because of one inexplicable lapse of sanity. She loved Carlos more than ever now. She even forgave him for leaving her again and for disappearing into the abyss of hatred that had consumed her country. He was probably thinking about her, wanting her, just as much as she did him. She felt his closeness and his love. He was inside her heart and filling it. Jack had made her understand everything.

  Her friendship with the Scotsman continued. She knew that they had crossed a line, and was determined that it would not happen again. The following night, they spoke about what had happened, and Jack made it clear that for him it hadn’t just been about a sexual encounter with a beautiful woman. It had come about because he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her. He had wanted her for so long that he’d thought of nothing else. But he knew, accepted even, that her heart belonged to some faceless Spaniard who could not even be bothered to write to her.

  Three days later, after particularly fierce fighting, María noted that Jack hadn’t returned from the front. It wasn’t too unusual for the ambulances to be out for hours on end, but it was strange that he’d been gone almost twelve hours with no word from him. After her shift ended, she fought her way through the traffic build-up on a sheltered part of the highway. She asked the others if they’d seen the red-haired Scotsman, but all she received were muted answers and shocked faces of men who had seen too much and couldn’t take anything else in.

  “Jack … Jack McFadden!” she shouted beside each ambulance: “Jack McFadden!” she kept shouting all the way to the front of the line.

  “Jack McFadden’s dead,” she heard a man say from within the shadows of the trees.

  “He’s dead?” she asked him, praying that she’d heard wrong. “Jack McFadden, the Scotsman? Are you sure?”

  The man came out of the shadows. He was limping badly, had a cut above an eye, and his face was as black as the night.

  “Yes, I’m sorry, love,” he told her. “He was caught in crossfire carrying a wounded man. He almost made it to our lines, but they got him in the back of the head. Killed him and the injured man outright.”

  María stumbled through her tears, not knowing where she was going, not really caring. He was dead. Her friend Jack … Sweet, kind, funny Jack was gone!

  Later, just before dawn, she found his body amongst a row of dead outside the main medical facility. His red hair, stained darker with blood, shone through the clear sheeting that covered him. He was instantly recognisable. She sat down beside his corpse and saw his brightly coloured scarf lying bloodied across his chest. She pulled the sheeting to uncover him to his waist. She kissed his bloodied forehead and then lifted the scarf. He would want her to have it, and she wanted to keep it as a reminder of her faithful, devoted friend.

  In the following days, she felt Jack’s loss grow keener, his death more painful. She lay on the grass and looked up at the blue sky without a cloud or patch of grey smoke from cannon fire. High on the hill, just above the tree-line, she made out the turrets of the old palace. Jack had promised to take her up there, she recalled now. They were going to discover its history together. She smiled a whimsical smile, recalling Jack’s account of its owner, though long dead and buried, still very much alive in his mind.

  “This was the home of a madman,” he’d told her in this very spot. “‘Yes, it was just up that road in the El Escorial hospital that King Philip the Second lived. You do know the story, don’t you?”

  María knew all there was to know about one of Spain’s most famous monarchs, but she wasn’t going to miss the chance of listening to her friend’s wonderful storytelling and told him innocently that she knew very little about the town or about Philip II.

  “Well,” he’d said with the excitement of a child. “Let’s have a nice wee cup of your Spanish coffee and I’ll tell you all about him.”

  María remembered that day as if it were yesterday. She’d sat comfortably against a shady stone wall, drinking the worst coffee she’d ever tasted and waiting for Jack to begin.

  “Pay attention. I’ll be asking questions later,” he’d told her with mock authority. “Now, Philip the Second was what you might call a raving madman. However, he was also an architectural genius. He searched all over Spain for a site, and an even better architect than himself, to build a magnificent palace, and he found the spot right here in this wee town. Some scholars say he was just bone lazy, but my guess is that the reason he retired here later was because he’d probably had one love affair too many and had caught some disgusting disease that he wanted to hide from the world. There are some bloody nasty diseases out there, you know, even today. Anyway, for some reason, he decided to live in the smallest room in one of the biggest palaces in Europe, maybe to atone for his sins. Who knows? But that man, María, stayed in that wee room and stank himself to death until there were maggots crawling all over him. Can you imagine it, dirty bugger!”

  “So what happened then?” she had asked him, not wanting him to stop.

  “Well, lass, he was found rotting away with his flesh half eaten. He had a loathsome disease. Well, that’s what the history books called it.’

  She closed her eyes. She was leaving this place, and she was glad, for she did not want to remain in El Escorial without Jack McFadden at her side. She opened her eyes and looked up at the hospital building once more. This would be the last time she saw it. She smiled again. She would always remember Jack McFadden’s animated expression, his love, and his kindness. She would never forget him for as long as she lived.

  Chapter 74

  Valencia, Spain – Present Day, 2010

  María’s tired eyes flickered open and shut with visions of Jack McFadden dancing in front of them. She felt a tear rest on her cheek but was too exhausted to wipe it away.

  “Granny? Yaya, have you had enough for today?” Lucia asked her grandmother.

  “No, dear, have you?”

  “No, of course not. I just don’t want to tire you out, that’s all. Yaya, you were so brave. Were you very lonely after Jack’s death?”

  “Yes, I was. My life seemed not worth living. Jack was funny and kind and very positive, always positive. He was like a light that shone bright in a world filled with darkness. One could just sense him being there, shining down on even the worst moments. I loved him … but not in the way I loved Carlos, of course. But we were so close, and in a time of war, that closeness with another human being was what kept one from drowning.

  “Oh, there was always Lucia, of course. She understood how I felt at that time, and your great-uncle Pedro did too. We saw him just before we left El Escorial, the same week Jack died. He told me about Joseph Dobbs and made it quite clear that Mama could never, ever know that he was alive. I distinctly remember that he said I should avoid Dobbs at all costs. That if I saw a strange man asking questions, or even looking at me in a strange way, I was to make sure that I was never alone and to pretend I didn’t know his real name. Pedro’s biggest worry was that Dobbs would spill the beans about who he was to the rest of the unit. Of course, there were many strange men about in those days, and as I pointed out to your great-uncle, how was I supposed to know which one was Dobbs? The evil in that man has never ceased to distress me. The worry he ca
used my poor brother …

  “Mother and father wrote constantly. Carlos and their letters were what I lived for. My father’s tuberculosis seemed to improve with country living, and according to my mother’s journals, so did his humour. Auntie Rosa banished herself to a room in the house and was hardly seen by anyone. It was as if she had become the nun that Marta never had the chance to be … that she felt compelled to live out my sister’s dream. Aunt Marie spent some time in Goudhurst, but she was never truly happy in the country, not with Auntie Rosa there, so she stayed in London and employed a married couple to look after her needs. Did I tell you how rich she was when she died?”

  “No,” Lucia told her, offering to make more tea.

  In the kitchen, Lucia’s smile disappeared, and a worried frown settled on her face. The doctor had been sent for twice in the space of a few days. Her grandmother’s health was deteriorating, and the doctor had told them all to be prepared. Only that morning he had said that pneumonia could snuff out her life at any time. She would simply close her eyes and cease to breathe. She poured the tea into the cups and sighed again.

  Whilst Lucia had been reading the journals aloud to her grandmother, María had often fallen asleep, unaware that she had continued reading them to her even when she snored gently and couldn’t possibly have heard a word she said. From the moment Lucia had arrived at La Glorieta, she had bowed to the task. Her grandmother had been adamant that she would not die until all the journals had been read to her and she was sure that La Glorieta remained in the family. That had been the strangest request of all, for in her mind, it didn’t matter what happened to the estate after her grandmother passed away. That she was to veto the sale was a tall order, even from her yaya, but the more she read, the more she understood.