“There’s the mill over the bridge,” he said. “She sometimes has rooms. The only other place is the posada—but they don’t take dogs.”
“Thank you.” Rose stood up. “What’s the lady’s name?”
The waiter shrugged. “Señora Molino.” He scooped up the money and headed back inside the building.
Mrs. Mill. Either he didn’t know the woman’s name or he didn’t want to say it. Rose wondered if this was a legacy of the Civil War. Cristóbal had warned her how it had divided communities—and that in the villages, the bitterness was more palpable than in the cities. She wondered what role the occupants of the mill had played. Had they been on the side of the fascists or the republicans? Had they been involved in the atrocities Lola had spoken about? Was that why the waiter was reluctant to say the family name out loud?
As Rose lifted her rucksack onto her back, she realized that she was going to have to be very cautious if she was going to get any further in her search. How to ask questions without ruffling feathers—that was going to take a lot of thought.
Chapter 19
It was just after three o’clock when Rose and Nieve arrived at the mill. Apart from half a dozen scrawny chickens scratching around in the dirt, there was no sign of life. Rose had forgotten that it was siesta time. Not a good time to go knocking on a stranger’s door. The only thing to do was wait. She sank down on the riverbank, glad to be free of the heavy rucksack. Nieve kicked off her boots and went to dip her feet in the rock pools near the water’s edge, Gunesh following her like a shadow.
“Don’t go any closer!” Rose called after her. The mill wheel—a wooden monster dripping with green weed—was churning around and around just yards from where Nieve stood. If they did manage to get a room here, Rose was going to have to give the child strict instructions about where she could and couldn’t play.
The sun made Rose feel drowsy. But she mustn’t doze off—that would be asking for trouble. Instead she unlaced her boots and went to join Nieve. She stood ankle deep in the water, letting it soothe her tired feet. It was icy cold. But she’d swum in rivers just as bone chilling as this in England. If it hadn’t been for the proximity of the mill, she would have been tempted to strip off and plunge in.
A sudden splash made her whip around. A boy of about Nieve’s age was standing by the mill wheel, throwing stones into the river. Gunesh leapt to retrieve them. The boy threw another, narrowly missing the dog’s head.
“¡Detente!” Rose shouted. “¡Tú le harás daño!” Stop! You’ll hurt him!
The boy had another stone in his hand, but instead of throwing it he scrambled down the bank. Gunesh gamboled up to him and shook himself violently.
The boy backed away. “Lo siento, no lo vi. ¿Morderá?” Sorry—I didn’t see him. Will he bite?
Rose yanked the dog away. Gunesh had green slime in his coat, and his breath stank of fish. “He won’t bite if you’re nice to him,” she replied. “Do you live here?” She cocked her head at the mill.
The boy nodded.
“Is your mother there? I’ve come to ask about a room—but I don’t want to disturb her if she’s sleeping.”
Without a word he loped off toward the mill, disappearing when he reached the top of the riverbank. He reappeared a few minutes later with a hard-faced girl at his side. She looked two or three years older than the boy and had the same hazel eyes and curly black hair.
“Mi hermano dice que usted quiere una habitación.” My brother says you want a room. The girl glanced at Rose’s muddy feet, then at the rucksack lying on the grass. “¿Gitana?”
Feeling in her pocket for her passport, Rose shot a warning glance at Nieve. “No, inglesa,” she replied.
The girl took the passport, examining each page until she came to the one with the photograph. Rose wondered if she could read—or was just pretending to. “Vale, está bien.” She huffed out a breath. “Porque no aceptamos gitanos.” That’s good—because we don’t allow Gypsies.
Rose felt her insides curl. If there had been any other place to stay, she would have walked away. She didn’t dare look at Nieve.
The girl sniffed as she handed back the passport. “¿Cuánto tiempo estarán?”
“Er . . .” Rose hesitated. “A couple of weeks—maybe longer,” she said.
“Síganme, por favor.” Follow me, please.
Her tone was annoyingly superior for one so young. Rose felt the girl’s eyes on her as she searched through her rucksack for a towel.
“Nieve—let me dry your feet.” The towel wasn’t very clean. There hadn’t been time to do any washing before they left Granada. As she dried her own feet, she felt exposed, vulnerable under the girl’s gaze. No doubt she would report back to her mother that the new guests were a pair of dirty English ragamuffins with a smelly dog.
She led Rose and Nieve around the back of the mill, through a low doorway, and up a flight of bare wooden stairs.
“This is it.” She opened the door of a sizeable room with low cane ceilings. There was a double bed, a washstand, a chest of drawers, and a table with two rickety-looking chairs.
“How much is it?” Rose asked.
“Six pesetas a week. Room only—payable in advance.”
“Is there somewhere I can cook food?”
The girl pointed to the fireplace. “You can buy wood from us—twenty cents a bundle.” She put her hands on her hips. “Well? Do you want the room?”
Rose nodded.
The girl held out her hand.
“There.” Rose gave her the coins. “I’ll have two bundles of wood, please—and some bread and cheese if you have any.”
“The bread’s all gone—you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for that.”
“What about cheese?”
“We might have some.” The girl shrugged. “I’ll ask my mother when she gets up.” She tossed a large iron key onto the bed and walked out of the room without another word.
“Do we have to stay here?” Nieve whispered. She looked as if she was about to start crying again.
“Just for a little while,” Rose said. She reached into her rucksack and pulled out a packet of candied chestnuts. “Here—this is for being such a good girl on the bus.”
Nieve sat on the bed, crunching sweets while Rose began to unpack. “Who’s that?” She pointed at a painting in a battered gilt frame hanging on the opposite wall. It depicted a small boy with a halo, carrying a lamb.
“Well, I suppose it’s meant to be Jesus,” Rose said. “When he was little.”
“No es Jesús.” It’s not Jesus.
Rose spun around, startled. A woman was standing in the doorway—an older version of the girl who had shown them up to the room.
“Señora Carmona.” She stepped across the threshold. “And you are?”
“Rose. Rose Daniel.” Rose held out her hand. “And this is Nieve.” She stopped short of saying “my daughter.” No need to tell the lie unless she was asked a direct question.
“And he is San Juan.” The miller’s wife gestured to the painting on the wall. “He was a shepherd, you know, before Jesus called him.”
“No, I didn’t know,” Rose replied.
“Like Mama,” Nieve piped up. “She looked after goats when she was young.”
“Did you?” The woman looked surprised.
Rose smiled to cover the jolt of panic Nieve’s innocent remark set off. “Yes. I’m a vet—an animal doctor. I worked on farms when I was a student.” It wasn’t a lie—but she was going to have to warn Nieve to be more careful with what she said.
“And what brings you here? To Pampaneira?”
This was a question Rose had prepared for. “I’m writing a book,” she said. “About animals. I needed somewhere quiet to work.” Much easier to say that than to risk alienating the woman by mentioning Nathan. Until Rose knew which side Señora Carmona and her family were on, it was too risky.
The woman nodded, apparently satisfied. “You asked for cheese,” she said. “You ca
n buy it from me if you want. I have honey, too. And there’s fruit from the orchard—peaches and figs if you want them.”
“Thank you.”
“You mustn’t go into the orchard yourself—come to the kitchen.” She glanced at Gunesh, who was curled up on a rug in front of the fireplace. “And make sure you keep him away from my chickens.”
“Yes, of course.”
“One more thing: don’t open the window. The flies are very bad this year. They’re spreading typhus down in Órgiva. If you let them in, you’ll never get rid of them.” With that she turned and walked out of the room.
“I don’t think she likes you.” Nieve’s remark was addressed to the dog—but Rose felt it applied equally to herself.
“Never mind.” Rose crouched down next to Nieve, who had her arms around Gunesh. “We’re going to have to be careful what we say to her, though. We have to play that game when other people are around.”
“Which game?”
“The one where you pretend I’m your mama.”
“I don’t like that game.” Nieve buried her face in Gunesh’s fur.
“I know you don’t, cariño—neither do I. But your mama asked me to play it. She just wants to keep you safe while she’s in . . . that place they took her to.” Rose bit her lip. How could she possibly explain it? If she told Nieve the reason for the subterfuge, the poor child would be terrified—as if she didn’t have enough to cope with already.
“I want Mama.” Nieve’s shoulders heaved with sobs. “Where is she?”
Rose wrapped her arms around the child and the dog. “We’ll get her back very soon,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard for you. But if you cry, you’ll make Gunesh cry, too.”
Nieve peered out from behind the dog’s ear, her cheeks wet with tears. “Dogs can’t cry—can they?” She moved her head so that she was eyeball-to-eyeball with Gunesh.
“Not like you and me,” Rose said. “They cry on the inside. When you’re sad, he’s sad, too.”
The child went silent for a moment. Then she said, “Where’s his mama?”
“A long way away—in a place called Afghanistan.”
“Farther than Granada?”
“Much farther.”
“Don’t cry, Gunesh.” Nieve ran her hand down the length of his back. “When we’ve got my mama back, we’ll go and find yours.”
It was very stuffy in the room at the mill. By the time she had finished unpacking, Rose’s clothes were sticking to her body. She washed herself and Nieve and sorted out fresh clothes for them both. Then she sent Nieve down to the kitchen to buy cheese and fruit for their supper and made a start on the letter she hoped would get Lola out of jail.
After three quarters of an hour, Nieve still hadn’t come back. Rose peered out the window. She had warned Nieve about the dangers of the mill wheel. But she was a child with more than the usual dose of curiosity. What if she’d gone exploring on her own?
Rose couldn’t see the mill wheel from the window. All she could see was a flower-filled terrace bordering the orchard. She pulled on her boots and clattered down the stairs, Gunesh hard on her heels. She ran around the corner of the building, covering the distance to the riverbank in less than a minute. The noise the wheel made was deafening. She stepped closer to the edge and peered down into the churning water, terrified of what she might see.
Gunesh’s nose nudged the back of her leg. She heard him bark over the roar of the water.
“What is it, boy?” She dropped to her knees and grabbed his collar. “Where is she? Where’s Nieve?”
The dog was looking away from the river. When she let go of him, he bounded to a big wooden door set in the side of the mill. Rose ran after him. There was a rusty iron latch—too high for her to reach.
“Nieve!” She hammered on the door with her fist. “Are you in there?”
There was a squeal of rusty hinges as the door swung open. Nieve was on the other side, a puzzled frown on her face and a white-tipped stick in her hand. Beside her stood the boy who had been throwing stones.
“Nieve! I thought you’d fallen in the river! Where have you been all this time?”
“Playing a game with Alonso,” she replied. “Come and see.” She took Rose by the hand and led her into the cavernous room where the grain was milled into flour. Sacks were stacked all around the room, and the sunbeams coming through the door lit up ghostly swirls of dust motes. She stopped in front of a wooden trough.
“It’s called tres en raya.” Nieve pointed with her stick to a grid pattern filled with crosses and circles drawn in the snowy white flour that filled the trough. “He won the first three—but I’ve just beaten him!”
Rose huffed out a breath. She could hardly blame the child for wanting to play after what she’d been through over the past few days. “That’s very clever,” she said. “But next time just come and tell me, will you? Then I won’t get worried.”
Before Nieve could reply, a small liquid missile splattered into the flour.
“What was that?” Rose tilted her head back. Whatever it was had come from the rafters high above them.
“It’s the swifts,” Nieve said. “Can you see the nests?”
“Oh yes, I can!” There were at least half a dozen of them, smooth brown cones of mud tucked into crevices in the roof. The parent birds were flying in and out of the hole in the wall, where an iron shaft the size of a tree trunk linked the grinding stone to the mill wheel outside. Watching them dart back and forth reminded Rose of the strange incident with the swift in the tavern. Her wish had come true almost at once—in a way she would never have wanted. She wondered what Lola was doing at this moment, cooped up all alone in a prison cell, pining for the child she had sent away.
“Alonso says their poo makes the flour taste better.” Nieve shot a mischievous look at Rose. It was good to see the child smiling.
“Hmm—I wonder if the baker in the village gets his flour from here,” Rose whispered. “I hope not!” She looked over her shoulder for the boy, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s Corpus Christi tomorrow. Alonso’s in it—can we go and watch?”
“Yes, if you want to. What is it?”
“Don’t you have it in England?” Nieve looked back at her, wide eyed. “It’s when boys and girls take the bread and wine at church for the first time.”
“Ah.” Rose nodded. “We do have that in my country, but it’s called something different.”
“Alonso says he has to wear a white sailor suit—and he hates it. But all the children in his class are in it—so he has no choice. The girls wear white dresses with veils. After church they follow the priest around the village. We have it in Granada—people put flowers and candles and pictures of Jesus outside their houses.”
It suddenly occurred to Rose that the children Nieve was talking about would all be about the same age as Nathan’s child would have been if he or she had survived. If Nathan had died or been taken prisoner, would his fiancée have stayed in the village? Could his son or daughter be living here?
Perhaps it was too much of a leap of the imagination. The letter had said that Nathan and his girlfriend planned to get out of Spain. Perhaps the discovery that they were expecting a baby had triggered that decision. To be pregnant by a man who had fought on the losing side must have felt like a ticking time bomb. Even if the girl had wanted to stay in the village, it was unlikely to have been an option.
But the Corpus Christi event might be an opportunity to talk to local people. She could start with the mothers of the children in the procession. Watch their faces when she showed them Nathan’s photograph. Perhaps she should try out the strategy on the miller’s wife. But no—there was something about the woman that made her afraid of exposing the real reason for her presence in Pampaneira. It wasn’t just the dismissive way the waiter had talked about her. She had left a cold, unwelcoming feeling in the room—despite only being in it for a matter of minutes. Better to wait, Rose decided. Talking to other people in
the village first might give her a clue as to which side the Carmona family had been on.
Rose was woken the next morning by the crowing of the mill’s cockerel. She rolled over, wondering if the noise had disturbed Nieve. But the child was still fast asleep, clutching the silk shawl patterned with peacocks that she insisted on taking to bed with her every night. Its edges were frayed and there were several holes in it. But it was hardly surprising she was so attached to it.
The images on the shawl reminded Rose of the feather Bill Lee always wore in his battered brown hat. She had asked him about it once. Why a peacock? Why not a pheasant or a jay—birds whose feathers were surely much easier to come by? He replied that the feather had belonged to his father, who had passed it on to him. He explained that to the Gypsies, the peacock was a symbol of protection and safeguarding.
In Nieve’s case, Bill’s words seemed bitterly ironic. The images on the shawl had been of no help to her mother that cold, cruel day in the mountains.
A young pregnant woman with black hair and a peacock shawl.
Who was she? Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s sister. Were any of her family still alive? Someone in this village must know who she was. Just as someone must know the identity of the person Nathan had fallen in love with. Rose tried to suppress the voice inside her head, enticing her to believe they were one and the same woman.
Rose left Nieve sleeping and went downstairs. She let herself out, shooing away the chickens as they clustered around her legs. There was a bench on the terrace, and she sat down among the flowers, breathing in the cool, scented air. From this vantage point, she could see rows of tomatoes and peppers laid out on the roof of the mill to dry in the sun. They glistened in the morning light, as if they were covered in frost. But it wasn’t cold enough at night for that—not even up here in the mountains. Rose guessed that it was salt—probably sprinkled on to keep the flies away.
Behind her she could hear the gurgle of water from a stream that wound its way through the orchard to join the river below. This place was very different from the dry, dusty plains she had traveled through on the way to Granada. The fruit trees, the flowers, the abundance of water were a rarity so far south. Nathan must have thought he’d stumbled on a sort of paradise. How tragic that it was a bitter, bloody war that had brought him here.
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