The Guardian of Secrets and Her Deathly Pact

by Jana Petken

  “Did your children know that your marriage wasn’t legal?” Lucia asked her.

  María tried to shake her head. “No, no one in the family ever found out,” she said, “and we didn’t care to tell them. Oh, I realise now that although it wasn’t important to us, it would have had held great importance for them, for their standing in the community. There was such snobbery in those days, you see. When your uncle Carlos started school, he insisted on being called Charles, for even at that young age, he knew he would be bullied for being a foreigner, for being different.

  “Your mother and your uncle Jaime were born and brought up at Merrill Farm, and none of my children ever found out that their father was a fugitive and a communist. My Carlos was always so ashamed of the torture he had committed for the Russians.”

  She closed her eyes and then asked for some water before she continued.

  “He made me promise on his deathbed never to tell the children anything, and I never have.”

  María slipped into a deep sleep, her shallow breathing rattling now and every so often halting completely. Lucia watched her with a mind filled with information and knowledge that would stay with her and her alone forever. She understood now why the others couldn’t read the journals. The rest of the family were ignorant of the fact that Carlos killed Joseph Dobbs, her great-uncle Pedro’s father and grandfather to her cousins. She shook her head, trying to clear it. So many secrets, she thought: Celia’s bigamy with Ernesto, María’s illegal marriage, Joseph Dobbs, Carlos’s exile, and Marta, the aunt no one ever talked about. The family shouldn’t find out now. Her grandmother was right; it was too late, and the secrets of the dead should and would remain hidden with them for all time.

  Lucia thought for a while about her mother and two uncles, Charles and Jaime. They had never been interested in La Glorieta and had always been indifferent to Spain, never knowing the country, never wanting to see the place where their parents had been born. They forced themselves to visit their mother only when duty called, and they had planned, just as her grandmother suspected, to sell everything after she died. María and Carlos didn’t set foot in their homeland until they were both in their sixties, after thirty-seven years of exile, wishing for home, Lucia thought. They had paid their dues, mourned their loss with dignity, and had kept secrets too painful to share. María had also kept her promise to Carlos, for his secrets had been in her safe hands all these years.

  Lucia wiped the perspiration from María’s whitish-grey skin and gave her most solemn promise. She would do the same for her grandmother; she would keep her secrets safe.

  María’s eyes opened again, and her soft shallow breathing filled the silent room. Suddenly she spoke, this time lucidly and without hesitation.

  “The rest of the family lived in fear after the war. So many were taken from La Glorieta, and not even my father’s power and influence could stop Franco’s men from stripping our land of the peasants who had nurtured it for so many years. So many were murdered after the surrender, good people’s lives snuffed out to satisfy the whim of our new dictator. Carlos’s father, Ramón, never saw La Glorieta again. My father found out that he had been hanged in some prison a year after being taken.”

  “And Grandfather’s mother?”

  “I don’t know … I don’t know.” María stopped speaking and grew quiet again. Her eyes closed and a tear balanced itself on an eyelash.

  Late in the night, Charles and Jaime stood at María’s bedside with their, sister, Angeles. María’s daughters-in-law and grandchildren sat with bored indifference on the sofas by the window, replacing the old trunk now hidden in Lucia’s attic.

  Lucia sat on a chair nearest to the bed, just in front of her uncle Charles. She held María’s cold withered hand and gently stroked her fingers. She was glad that the family had made it in time to say goodbye, and she was also happy that her grandmother was going.

  She turned to her uncle Charles and gave him a weak smile. It was time for her grandmother to leave them. Her breath was shallow, and the life force within her body was being snuffed out like a candle. Lucia’s uncle returned her smile and put his hands on her shoulders. A tear fell from his eye. She stared into his face and felt his sorrow. She had never been close to her uncle Charles, she thought just then. He travelled all over the world. He was Sir Charles Merrill, an author and royal biographer knighted by the queen for his literary contribution on the history of the Royal Family.

  Lucia put her small hand on top of his. His hands were so large on wrists twice the size of her own. He was in his seventies now, but he was still a bull of a man, with bulging muscles and a full head of red hair, now grey at the front and sides. She had never noticed his hair before or really looked at him as she did now. Lucia smiled again and turned to her grandmother. An old black-and-white photograph from the trunk came to mind: thick red hair, freckles, and the frame of a bodybuilder. She sucked in her breath and held it, afraid that the noise of letting it out would alert her uncle whose, hand she still held. A photograph of Carlos, her grandfather, also jumped into her head. She could see it plainly, as though she were holding it in front of her eyes. Carlos, blue-black hair, of slim build, and with eyes a tunnel of darkness.

  She expelled her breath slowly and sat wide-eyed, staring at María with her mouth half-open; she could scarcely believe what she knew to be true. All the secrets were now unimportant. Nobody cared about the Spanish Civil War, and no one in this room would care about the secrets in the journals, for they were from another time, another world. Her grandmother, always so keen to keep her secrets, had shared them all with her, shared them all except for one, the greatest secret of all: Uncle Charles was Jack McFadden’s son!

  She leaned forward, swept gentle fingers down María’s cheek, and then pressed her mouth to her ear. “Yaya, I will not allow the family to sell La Glorieta,” she whispered. “I promise it will be your lasting legacy. It will continue to cure the sick and care for the old. I’m going to destroy the journals. I’ll be the keeper of secrets now. I love you.”

  María opened her eyes and smiled. She saw faces and heard voices calling her name. They were all there: Carlos, Pedro, and Miguel, grinning from ear to ear. Her mother and father holding hands and Marta beckoning to her just as she used to do as a child …

  “I’m coming, Marta,” María said softly. “I’m coming now …”

  THE END

  About the Author

  Hello everyone.

  I lived out my childhood days in, Dénia, on the beautiful eastern coast of Spain and have after a long adventure returned there to live on a permanent basis. My family settled in Spain but I took a different path. I am a born traveller. I very rarely went to school, but travelling gave me the best education I could ever have hoped for.

  I joined the (British) Royal Navy at the age of seventeen. I was a leading Naval Policewoman, equivalent to a sergeant in the military police. I would like to think that the Navy taught me discipline and Respect for others.

  After the Navy, I went to work for a travel company as an overseas representative. Seasons in the Balearic Islands, followed by the Canary Islands and North Africa awakened my interest in "people studying."

  During the first Gulf War I was a security guard at the BBC World Service radio station. I worked twelve-hour nightshifts guarding an Iraqi Journalist, famous (or rather infamous) in his own country. I was head-hunted by a man who worked for, the now, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. I left the BBC and then spent twelve years as a bodyguard for a Saudi Princess. I travelled extensively, dined with kings and royalty, and spent a lot of time waiting for my Princess to get out of bed before long days of clothes shopping.

  My marriage lasted twelve years but my divorce ended my career as a bodyguard (divorcing my husband was unforgivable as far as the Saudi's were concerned).

  I found a new career as a cabin-crew member for British Airways, which allowed me to travel extensively to every corner of the world, at least two or three times. I have n
ever been to New Zealand - a pity, or to Iran, which would have been an eye opener.

  Unfortunately, I had an accident on board a flight. The aircraft, a Boeing 747, was flying at 39,000 feet above Africa when it was caught in clear-air turbulence. As the plane dropped my body flew upward causing my head to hit the cabin's ceiling. As a result of this accident, I have had three major operations on my spinal cord and am now retired. I missed the busy and interesting experiences that my job had brought me, thus turning my attention to writing.

  The Guardian of Secrets is my first major work of, historical fiction. My new book, Mercy Carver, Dark Shadows, is the first book in the Mercy Carver series and will be followed by, Mercy Carver Blood Moon, end of 2014.

  I am a relatively unknown author, yet I dream, hope, and pray that my books will be given the chance they deserves. Everyone has to start somewhere and I begin this new journey right here, right now. It's nice to meet you all...

  www.janapetkenauthor.com