She thought of the scene Lola had described—her mother and brother gunned down in an act of mass slaughter. It must have happened within walking distance of this place. What had happened to all those dead people? Had anyone buried them? Or were the bodies simply left where they lay, until the snow melted and flowers sprang from the earth to cover them?
Where are you, Nathan?
She whispered the words into the still morning air. Her head told her that she was summoning a ghost. That in all likelihood her brother had never made it out of these mountains. But if he had died here, she needed to know where. If all she could do was mark the place with a wooden cross or a stone, the journey here would not have been in vain. The not knowing would be over.
The smell of baking bread brought her back to reality. It made her stomach rumble. She got up and followed her nose to the kitchen.
“Buenos días.”
The miller’s wife glanced up at Rose, murmuring something inaudible in reply. She was pounding something in a pestle and mortar.
“I wondered if I could buy some bread?”
“Un momento.” Señora Carmona emptied the contents of the mortar into a metal pan and carried it through to the lofty room that housed the grinding equipment. Rose followed, thinking the woman was going to fetch a loaf. But the miller’s wife set the concoction she’d been making on the side of one of the flour troughs and took a box of matches from the pocket of her apron.
Rose stood watching as a match was struck and held inside the pan until the contents caught fire. An acrid smell wafted across the room.
“What’s that?” Rose coughed as the smoke caught her chest.
“It’s for the flies!” The miller’s wife swept out her arm. “It always works—they can’t stand the smell.”
“I’m not surprised,” Rose spluttered. “What’s in the pan?”
“Crushed garlic and the hottest peppers,” the woman replied. “And human hair. I’m going to need more of that to do the rest of the house—perhaps you and your daughter can save me some from your hairbrushes.”
Rose thought she’d rather put up with the flies than a smell like that. She glanced up at the rafters, where the swifts were darting around in a crazed aerial ballet.
“What about the birds?” Rose asked. “They have babies in their nests—the smoke might harm them.”
“They will die.” The woman shrugged. “But the parents can make more.” She poked at the pan with a stick, stoking up the flames.
Rose looked away. Clearly life was still cheap in this place that had seen so much human bloodshed. What the miller’s wife was doing went against everything Rose believed in. She had spent the whole of her adult life trying to save the lives of animals. To watch this wanton destruction was more than she could bear. The only way to stop herself giving the woman a mouthful of abuse was to leave the room.
“What about your bread?” Señora Carmona called after her.
Rose fought hard to resist the temptation to tell her what she could do with it. But there was no sense in getting herself and Nieve thrown out with nowhere else to go. She was just going to have to bite her tongue.
She dived into the kitchen and scanned the walls. There were jars of honey on one shelf and a row of goat cheeses wrapped in muslin on another. Grabbing one of each, she tossed fifty cents onto the table before running back up the stairs.
At midday Rose and Nieve were waiting outside the Church of Santa Cruz for the procession to begin. The Calle Veronica—the street that led through the town to the main square—was lined with little shrines that had sprung up overnight. The people who lived in the village had made them from tables covered in embroidered cloths, on which were placed towering arrangements of olive branches with white lilies woven into them. Lighted candles sat in jars in front of small statues of the crucified Christ or images of the Virgin Mary painted on wood.
Rose had thought about going to the church service—but she hadn’t wanted to leave Gunesh in the room at the mill, which was uncomfortably hot by midmorning. It would have been difficult to get a seat in the church anyway—the whole village seemed to have turned out for what was no doubt a very important day in the life of the community. It was like a mass wedding—with miniature brides and grooms. The little girls had skipped up the steps of the church, with their white dresses trailing in the dust and their veils billowing in the breeze. Behind them the boys had marched stiffly, looking very self-conscious in starched suits embellished with gold braid, like pocket-size admirals.
After watching them go in, Rose and Nieve had taken Gunesh for a walk along the river, then come back for a drink at the fountain outside the church. As Rose filled her bottle with the gushing water, she thought about what she was going to say and do when the procession got underway. The best thing, she had decided, would be to make an admiring comment about the dress or suit of one of the boys or girls. Then once the conversation had progressed, she would say that she had come from England on a working vacation to write a book about animals. That, she hoped, would place her outside any simmering resentment that lingered between different factions of the local population.
“Look—they’re coming out!” Nieve’s voice broke through her thoughts. “There’s Alonso—at the front.”
The miller’s son glanced this way and that at the people pouring out of the church, looking as if he wished the ground would open and swallow him up. Rose spotted his mother, clad entirely in black, coming down the steps. It was something she had noticed throughout Spain, this somber custom of dress the women had. It seemed that as soon as they reached their midtwenties, they wore only black when they were out in public—whether they were married, widowed, or single. To Rose it seemed very repressive—as if a woman over twenty-five was on the scrap heap and should no longer try to make herself attractive.
The children started to move forward, followed by a priest in richly embroidered robes who was swinging a censer. The perfumed smoke wafted over the parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles assembled on either side of the street. As Rose watched, she couldn’t help remembering what Cristóbal had said about the aftermath of the Civil War in small communities like Pampaneira:
In the villages, it’s worse than in the cities because everyone knows what their neighbor did. It’s like waking up with the worst hangover you’ve ever had.
What had these people done to each other? Had any of the men gazing proudly at their sons and daughters been members of the death squad that had raided Lola’s house the day Nieve was born? Had any of these families lost mothers or sisters in the massacre that had followed?
It was strange to think that Nieve could be a blood relative of one or more of these people, that the gray-haired woman standing next to the miller’s wife could be her grandmother, or the ruddy-faced man in the doorway of the church her uncle.
A young pregnant woman with black hair and a peacock shawl.
There had to be a way to find out the identity of Nieve’s mother. But it would require an even greater degree of subtlety than the search for information about Nathan. And it could put Nieve in danger. If people found out the child was not Rose’s daughter but an orphan, she could be at even greater risk from the authorities than if she’d remained in Granada. And what if there was a relative still living—someone who might claim her and prevent her going back to Lola?
As the procession wound its way along Calle Veronica, Rose caught sight of another group emerging from the church—strange adult figures robed in white like the children but with their faces obscured by hoods with tall pointed tops. They reminded Rose of grainy newspaper images she had seen of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Who are they?” she asked Nieve.
“The penitentes,” Nieve replied. “They’re people who’ve done bad things. They need to ask Jesus to forgive them—but they don’t want to show their faces, because if they did, everyone would know they were bad.”
In light of what had just been going through Rose’s mind, the hooded f
igures looked very sinister indeed. The body shapes beneath the robes were all male. She wondered just how bad a person had to be to take part in this public display of repentance—and whether the sins they were atoning for were recent or historic. Could some of these men have been involved in the slaughter Lola had described?
Behind the penitentes came a group of middle-aged women chanting a mournful song. The intense, painful quality of the sound they made reminded Rose of the songs Cristóbal sang. She looked away, raising her head in case Nieve saw the look on her face. A blur flashed across her field of vision. Then another. Swifts were diving over the procession, feasting on the flies attracted by the smell of so many human bodies.
Rose, Nieve, and Gunesh fell into step at the back of the procession. After only a short distance, it came to a stop at the first of the little shrines. The priest sprinkled holy water on the olive boughs woven with lilies, reciting prayers that the children in white dutifully repeated. When they moved on again, Nieve asked if she could take Gunesh to the front to walk behind the children. Rose let her go. After a couple of minutes, the procession stopped at a second shrine. Rose turned to the woman walking alongside her.
“¿No son encantadores?” Aren’t they lovely?
“Sí, encantadores,” the woman replied.
“Which one is yours?”
“That one.” The woman pointed to a girl whose white satin frock was embellished with silver sequins at the neck and wrists.
“What a pretty dress.” Rose paused for a moment, then she said, “I’ve never seen anything like this before—I’m visiting from England.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “What brings you to Pampaneira?”
Rose came out with the line about writing a book. Then she said, “My brother used to live here.”
“In the village?”
“No—in the mountains. We . . . lost touch a few years ago. I’m not sure if he’s still living around here . . .” She broke off with a shrug.
“How long ago did you last hear from him?”
Rose drew in a breath. There was no way of avoiding a direct answer. “About eight years ago.”
The woman’s face clouded.
“I have a photograph—perhaps you . . .”
She turned away before Rose could finish, elbowing her way through the crowd until she was hidden from view behind the shrine.
By the time the procession had completed its circuit of the village, Rose had had similar conversations with four other people. She had tried an elderly man, a woman in her fifties, and two young mothers. All four had reacted in the same way, polite interest turning to blank indifference the moment they realized that Nathan had been in the area during the Civil War.
As the crowd dispersed, Rose felt utterly despondent. Cristóbal had been right. It was as if a collective amnesia had fallen upon the inhabitants of Pampaneira. How on earth was she going to find out what had happened to Nathan if no one would even look at his photograph?
A breath of wind gusted through the square, sending a drift of petals from the little shrines. It caught Rose’s earrings. She felt the twists of copper wire brush against her neck. She pushed her hair aside, checking that she hadn’t lost either one. As her fingers touched the tiny blue beads, she thought of Jean Beau-Marie and what he’d said when he’d given them to her. She thought of what he had endured, seeing his entire family wiped out by the Nazis, and of the daily battle he now faced just to carry on living. It put her own despondency into perspective.
As if to underline the point, the bells of Santa Cruz chimed the hour.
Ring out the bad and the cruel. Ring in something better.
It was as if Jean were sending her a message through the ether.
The next morning Rose was up and dressed by the time the sun rose over the mountains. She wanted bread for Nieve’s breakfast—but she wasn’t going to buy it from Señora Carmona. It wasn’t just the business with the baby swifts: Rose suspected the woman had gone through her belongings while she and Nieve had been out for a walk the previous evening. There had been an impression on the bed—as if someone had sat on it—and her passport had been in the wrong pocket of her rucksack.
She made her way across the bridge that spanned the rushing water far below. On the opposite bank of the river, goats were being driven out of the houses. They were being taken out to pasture by men whose voices echoed through the cool morning air. She couldn’t understand what they were shouting. It sounded like “She-bah! She-bah!” Their cries were accompanied by the musical tinkling of the goats’ bells. Rose thought of Lola, doing what these men were doing on that fateful morning eight years ago, embarking on a daily routine with no idea that her life was about to be torn apart. And if it hadn’t been her turn to take the goats out that morning—if her brother had gone instead—she wouldn’t be alive and neither would Nieve.
When Rose reached the bakery, there was already a line of people out the door. She said good morning to the elderly woman standing in front of her—but got no response apart from an almost imperceptible nod of the head. If the woman was not in the mood to pass the time of day with a stranger, she was unlikely to be interested in Rose’s search for Nathan. Perhaps she would have better luck later, when the post office opened. Buying stamps for her letters would be a good opportunity to ask questions.
With a loaf under her arm, Rose hurried back toward the bridge. She needed to get Nieve up and dressed and fed before half past seven if she was going to be in time for school. Although it was only a matter of weeks until classes ended for the summer holidays, Rose thought it would do Nieve good to be with other children.
On the way to Pampaneira, Rose hadn’t been sure if Nieve would want to go to school. She thought the trauma of seeing Lola dragged off by the Guardia Civil would make the child too clingy and timid for such a big step. But making friends with Alonso had made all the difference. Now that Nieve already knew one of her classmates, she couldn’t wait to go there.
As Rose crossed the bridge, she heard singing. The sound was coming from the river. Looking down, she saw women washing clothes in the stretch of water below the mill. They were singing as they beat the wet clothes on the rocks—the sweet, sad, throbbing chant of flamenco.
Cristóbal’s face filled her mind’s eye. She wondered what he was doing at this moment. He had talked about getting Juanita and the children away from Granada, to their relatives in the countryside. But Lola had said he wouldn’t stay away from his beloved Granada for long. And Lola needed him. There was no one else to go and visit her in that dungeonlike police cell. Remembering the disdainful looks she had received, Rose wondered if Cristóbal would get past the front desk. Without the benefit of a British passport and unable to read and write, he was unlikely to be of much help to Lola.
Rose thought of the letters she had written last night. First she had written to Lola herself—a difficult letter to compose because she knew that it was certain to be read by her jailers. She wanted to convey hope for the future and reassurance about Nieve’s well-being but was afraid of saying anything that might give away the fact that Nieve was with her in Pampaneira.
When she had finished that letter, she had written three more: one to the chief of the Guardia Civil, one to the mayor of Granada, and another to the mayor’s wife. The last one had been an afterthought. It had occurred to her that the powerful men she was writing to might regard Lola’s case in the same chauvinistic way as the arresting officers had—that Antonio Lopez had been guilty of no crime because he had repeatedly offered marriage and had the blessing of Lola’s only male relative. But perhaps the mayor’s wife would see things in a different light. Rose had no idea what kind of woman she was—all she knew was her last name—but desperate circumstances called for a leap of faith. The letter might not even get to her—but it was worth a try.
Chapter 20
Granada, Spain: The same day
Lola was beginning to lose track of time. There was a tiny window in the cell, too hig
h to see out of. It must be north facing, she thought, because the sun never seemed to be on it. And the glass was so dirty it was impossible to tell if the sky was blue or gray. Was this her fourth morning or her fifth? She couldn’t remember.
When she had woken up the previous day, the feeling of hopelessness had been overwhelming. Being locked up was terrifying. The rising panic she experienced every time she opened her eyes and realized where she was made it hard to breathe. But worse than that was the loss of Nieve. In eight years Lola had never spent a single night away from her. The ache in her heart was like a physical pain.
She had lain there on the hard, evil-smelling mattress, wanting to die. Images from her life ran through her mind’s eye like a movie reel spinning out of control. She went back in time to the day she had found Nieve, wailing and bloody. She saw herself, moments before, lying down in the snow beside the bodies of her mother and Amador. She had wanted to die then. Would have died if she’d carried on lying there. But Nieve had saved her.
Don’t die, Mama.
She’d heard the child’s voice, so clear she had sat bolt upright on her bed in the cell. Oh God, she thought, I’m losing my mind.
It was then that her body had taken over, moving trancelike, in the only way she had ever known to obliterate anguish. She got to her feet, unsteady at first, and stood in the center of the tiny room. She stretched out her arms. There was less than a foot between her fingertips and the walls—but that was enough. Then she raised her arms above her head. A naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling, only an inch or two higher than her hands. But if she was careful, she could avoid hitting it.
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