The Spanish Promise

by Karen Swan

  But he just picked up his jacket and walked over to the door, looking back at her with an expression she couldn’t read. ‘You already did, Charlotte.’

  Chapter Eight

  Ronda, June 1936, four days later

  Nene pulled the brim of her hat low. She had stolen it from a peg in the maids’ quarters, the thin shawl and dress too. The dress was slightly too tight across the bodice and a fraction too short in the arms and length – she was so much taller than most other women – but comfort mattered for nothing right now. She just needed to move incognito through these streets, to pass through unrecognized and unmolested.

  The bells were already ringing, calling out the mourners, and a steady stream of people were wending their way through the hilly cobbled streets to the Church of Santa Maria la Mayor. Dressed all in black, they looked like scurrying ants from this distance.

  She hastened her stride, overtaking a family, the parents struggling to move at any speed with their young children, and she took care to keep her head dipped, her eyes averted as she passed. Her heart was pounding with the terror that she would be recognized and outed – for if that happened, she knew her safety could not be guaranteed. There were stories all over the wireless of atrocities being committed with alarming frequency against people being found in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Tensions since the elections in February had reached breaking point, with communities now pitched against one another: Republicans v. Nationalists; Carlists v. anarchists; Falangists v. communists. Skirmishes were becoming fights, protests revolutions. The country was scaling up its anger, the quivering tension becoming tighter every day. The rule of law increasingly counted for nothing and there was talk that even the military was going to revolt.

  Nonetheless there had been no question of her not coming here. She needed to pay her respects to the man who had never been anything other than kind to her, who was the father of her best friend in the world; she needed to kneel before God and beg forgiveness that his life had been taken by her own blood without mercy or just cause. She had scarcely slept since it had happened; her appetite completely diminished, she had grown thin even in the space of four days and she knew her older brothers were watching her closely, looking for signs that she might betray them to their father and give the true account of what had happened.

  But would he believe her if she did? Would he care? The Civil Guard had not even paid a visit to the estate, not a single question had been raised. Juan Esperanza’s death had simply been accepted. He had been inciting violence, fuelling a revolution; it was self-defence, that was the official line, and in the face of the Mendoza brothers’ great name and powerful brutality, who would dare refute it?

  The peal of the bells lured her onwards, their mournful song beginning to vibrate through her bones as she walked between the giant yew trees that flanked the west door and joined the shuffling mourners filing into the church. It was a deceptively unobtrusive building from outside, the humble plain stone tower offset by balconied colonnades to one side, the narrow arched windows and minaret-turned-tower betraying the building’s original Islamic roots.

  She kept her head down as she waited her turn in the queue and it was a relief to step into the church’s cold embrace, the scorch of the sun on her back immediately quenched as brown marble replaced hot cobbles. As always when she entered this holy space, her eyes were drawn upwards. It was an instinct impossible to resist, for the church’s plain facade hid a magnificent interior – the vaulted ceilings frothing with murals and baroque frescoes, an opulent crystal chandelier dangling down as big as a man. The church’s very shape was ornate too, the seemingly boxy exterior revealing a polygon clad in reeded marble and dimpled with deep niches and alcoves. But it was the gilded, full-height altarpiece that always rendered everyone mute, reinforcing the supreme majesty of the god they had come to worship.

  Nene took a seat in one of the pews at the back, pushing herself into the corner and trying to look unobtrusive. She had never sat here before, her family always front and centre in the best seats, closest to God. From lowered eyes she watched the feet of the mourners shuffling past her on the brown and white marbled floor, the stitches missing in some leather uppers, patches on others, but all of them polished to a shine. The men were in their best suits, the women in their mourning hats, all of them dignified in their unified grief. Nene could hardly lift her head from the shame that they were gathered here because of what her brothers had done – killed a man. Murdered him. Vale had accused Jose of being an animal – but who was the beast really, who was proven the most barbaric and base?

  An elderly couple came and sat beside her, easing themselves slowly onto the unforgiving wooden pews, coughing lightly into handkerchiefs, their breath coming in exhausted rasps. The church was almost completely full, the pews filling up rapidly so that soon there would not be enough room to sit. She pulled her elbows in, trying to take up as little space as possible and hoping desperately no one would look at her too closely. She tugged down on the sliver of net that was passing as a veil. Her own mourning mantilla fell to her collarbone, obscuring her face completely, and would have done a far better job at concealing her identity as well as tears – but it was in itself too decorative, a Chantilly lace from Paris that would have announced her presence as loudly as any speaker.

  The congregation sat in almost perfect silence but for the occasional cough or sob, everyone’s heads tilted skywards. Nene’s eyes scanned the backs of their heads, guessing their identities from their body posture and hairstyles. Manuel Garcia, the barber; Andres Ramirez, the mechanic; Emiliano Dambolena, the pig man. Pablo Lopez, the man who had instigated the quarrel with Señor Martin. He was sitting in the second pew from the front; she could tell him just by the anger in his shoulders which were risen almost up to his ears, his jaw set forwards like a brake. His wife – bony-shouldered and shivering – sat beside him, her head bent low as she worried at some rosary beads, tutting to herself as they waited for the ceremony to begin.

  But it was the solitary figure in the front pew – hunched and tiny in black – that stilled the blood in Nene’s veins. Santi’s mother, Renata. She was as still as the statues all about, as frozen behind her mask of grief as the gilded figures at the altar. Nene had only met her three times – once at the Feria Goyesca bullfighting festival; once in corking season when she had come up to La Ventilla with refreshments; and once when Nene and Santi had walked too far one afternoon and she had set up a small search party. Nene remembered her as a vivacious woman: Santi had inherited his infectious smile from her and the gap between his teeth. Her skin was too tanned (her mother would have said), her face too thin, but she had been a beautiful woman once; Nene had understood that even as a small girl and many times she had wished she could have known her better. But politics, class . . . the adult world, had made it impossible. She wasn’t supposed to ‘consort’ with those people, as her mother put it. It was unseemly for her to run about the fields like a campesino, to come in with muddy hands and scraped knees, to laugh with the labourers as though they were her equals, to call them her friends. Her best friend.

  Santi.

  Shame bled through her, staining her cheeks, and she wrung her hands as she thought yet again about what he must have thought, how he must have felt, when he’d heard his father had been murdered. By her family. It was her torture, to imagine his face . . .

  A note sounded, pure and steady, as though an angel was floating through the mihrab, towards the east window and heaven itself. Everyone turned and stood as one, as the singer – a girl not much older than her – came through, her voice expanding into the billowing space as she sang ‘Ave Maria’. Behind her, coming at an almost ceremonial half-step, the coffin inched into view and Nene felt a gripping tightness at her chest as she saw the pall-bearers come in, their shoulders sagging beneath the weight.

  At the very front was Santi. For a moment, she did not recognize him. He had grown so tall and strong, his skin darker than she h
ad ever seen it; his shaggy hair of their childhood cropped short, revealing those beautiful bones of a face she had loved and missed these four years. But he was different in other ways too – he was a man now. The shadow of stubble prickled his cheeks and jawline, there was a scar on his neck that hadn’t been there before, and where once his eyes had danced and laughed, now they blazed, fixed upon the altar as though there were answers there to his questions.

  She watched the coffin slide by, her breath held, unable to believe it was her brothers, her blood, who had put a man inside that box. The girl’s voice began to soar as the coffin was carried to the front and set down on the trestle, the men grunting slightly as they struggled to make the transition respectfully smooth. They took their seats besides their wives, families. Mother.

  Nene watched as Santi leant over and kissed Renata’s temple, saw how the older woman nodded and dabbed at her eyes. This was the aftermath – the living with the pain. She had seen the final moments of Juan Esperanza’s life: the crack shot that had rung out, sending the birds from the trees and all of them to the ground; the slow-motion stagger as the dying man dropped from his upright position – noble and proud in life – to lie in the dirt until the big bright sky bleached out to nothing. Only a handful of people in this space had shared that experience and now they were here, like her, with him still. The horror of those few minutes had changed something inside her in ways she couldn’t yet fully understand and she would have to live with the guilt and the shame for the rest of her life. But it was those two people, sitting alone at the front, who would suffer most of all – more than Juan, or her, or the other men.

  The girl finished singing and the priest began, his voice intoning solemnly to the hushed congregation. Nene didn’t hear what he said. Her attention was focused entirely on Santi, or rather the back of his head, her eyes scrutinizing every inflection, tilt, freeze. When finally their eyes met again, would she be able to read him still? As children she had been easily able to read his mind. He was as open as a book, she always used to laugh – all his hope, bravado, hunger, mischief, writ large in those limpid eyes his father had given him. But now, the prospect of meeting his gaze and the truth of what her family had done to his lingering between them made her chill. It was crazy even to have come here. One word and he could betray her, and these dignified, unified mourners would become a lynch mob, out for Mendoza blood.

  It was a risk she had been prepared to take. She had to believe that he too knew their friendship went deeper than names or associations; he had to know that what her brothers had done, she would never do, nor endorse, and she would risk her own safety to prove that to him for she was in his territory here. Now she was the vulnerable one.

  She tried to partake in the service. When they prayed, she prayed harder than she ever had, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands blanched; and when they sang, she looked skywards, in case her Catholic sincerity could atone for her brothers’ barbarity. But her chance for redemption had a time limit and too soon the service was over, Santi leading the pall-bearers as they stood to take the weight of his father again.

  Nene watched them get into position, steadying themselves and taking a breath before they began the slow walk back up the aisle. Her limbs were leaden, all sound drowned out by the rushing of blood through her head as he drew closer. Closer.

  Her head was tilted down but her eyes tipped up, obscured only a little by the net veil, her gaze fastened to him like a pin. He was two arm’s lengths away now, his stare locked onto the rectangle of light through the open door. His jaw balled as he walked, one cheek pressed to the pine casket and she saw that not one tear had fallen; his eyes were dry. Determined.

  She swallowed, knowing he was about to pass without seeing her. In another second he would be gone and he would never know that she had come here, risked herself, for him. She wanted to reach or call out, cough or swoon – something, anything to catch his attention. But he was blind to all this: these people, the singers, the hymns and prayers; lost in his grief.

  So it was all the more shocking then, when suddenly his gaze shifted – instinct kicking in as though he sensed her – and his bladed brown-eyed gaze swivelled sidelong straight towards her. It was only for a second, but that was enough. She saw the startle in his face, and then the deeper shift in his soul, his attention fully fastening onto her and turning his head even as his feet propelled him onwards, out of sight.

  Nene felt her breath come in short, ragged pants, her heart clattering erratically as he disappeared from view. She wanted to run after him, to follow him into the plaza and throw herself on his mercy. But that was impossible. She had been able to read him after all and that alone remained the same – but her old friend had become a stranger, changed by fortunes, destroyed by her family.

  Tipping her head down again, she pushed against the flow of the crowd, slipping out through the side door. She knew she couldn’t stay here or wait to be seen: he would throw her to the dogs. For in that single moment when their eyes connected, she had seen inside his heart and understood there was no longer any room for love or friendship.

  He was a man intent on revenge and they were all in uncharted waters now.

  Chapter Nine

  Charlotte pushed back in her chair and looked out at the Madrid skyline. She had been back at her desk in Steed’s Madrid offices for an hour now – having left the hotel as quickly as she’d entered it; she couldn’t bear to stay in the room, in that bed, without him – but she had achieved precisely nothing. Her mind kept incessantly, insistently, going over and over the afternoon’s events, recalling every last look, comment, gesture. She felt stunned, still. Had it even happened? How could he have just left like that, without giving her a chance to explain? It was almost as though he’d been expecting it, like he’d been looking for an excuse to leave, to get away from her.

  As for Stephen . . . She dropped her head again. The thought of him made her feel sick, not from guilt but lack of it – for not at any point in her stolen hours with Nathan had she once thought about him or felt bad about what she was doing. In fact, it had all been so natural, instinctive and primal between them that it was he who had felt like the aberration, the intruder to the natural order of things. The awful truth was that it hadn’t been a lie when she’d said he was no one. Compared to Nathan, everyone was no one and he was everything.

  And what did that mean? How could she marry a man she—

  No. She didn’t want to think about it. He was a good man, they made a great team. They’d shared eighteen months together and it all worked – their friends liked each other, their parents got on; he had his own career and seemed to accept (just about) her need for hers . . . It wasn’t a dynamite pairing, they weren’t the high-octane, party-loving pair she’d been with Jules – and thank God for it. Stephen was the antidote to all that. He kept her steady.

  Yes, steady. Plodding. Safe. That was what she had always sought – the life she had never known as a child when strangers wandered through the house at night in their party clothes, when her father’s glassy eyes and her mother’s shrill nervous laughter were more unsettling than any scream, when Mouse would climb into her bed every night and together they would listen to the crystal smashing.

  ‘Pa?’

  The bedroom was quiet, a window open so that she could hear the birds in the oak tree outside, even though it was cold. Freezing in fact.

  ‘Pa, are you here?’

  She tiptoed into his sanctuary. She and Mouse weren’t allowed in there ordinarily, he needed his privacy, he said, somewhere he could escape the endless demands they all made on him.

  ‘Mouse is hurt, Pa, she trod on some glass . . .’

  Her gaze swept around the room in dismay. Disgust. The walls, decorated with silver grey chinoiserie panels depicting exotic birds and blossom trees, were stippled with cigarette burns; a bamboo-style Chippendale chair was tipped on its back; clothes were strewn over every surface as if a gale had broken in and partied in the room.
The vast bed she and Mouse had always wanted to make dens on but had never been allowed, was unmade, the sheets grubby and twisted and stained with assorted body fluids she didn’t want to think about.

  Even she and Mouse kept their rooms better than this. What would Mrs B say if she saw it? But then she wasn’t allowed in here either.

  ‘. . . She needs stitches. We don’t know where Mama’s gone and Mrs B can’t drive . . .’

  She crept through, into the dressing room, which was more of the same, if not worse: almost every item of clothing was torn off the hangers and piled on the floor in heaps, obscenities scrawled on the mirrors with lipstick and nail varnish.

  ‘. . . Pa? Can you help?’

  She was at the bathroom door now and she stared down at the handle. But she couldn’t turn it. Her arm wouldn’t move.

  Because her feet were getting wet.

  Yes, there was a lot to be said for safe. Living in the glare of flashlights and headlines, she had had to burrow hard to find refuge in the shadows: she had a different name now, a respectable job and none of her clients had ever guessed just how well qualified she was to preach. She had done what her father could not and found a way to survive.

  But Nathan, he threatened that. He always had. He made the world spin faster. He made the colours truer. He was an obsession she would lose herself in and she couldn’t afford to live on those boundaries.

  She stared down at the desk that was hers for the duration of her trip. It was largely bare, save for the thick and weighty Mendoza files and a few Post-it notes, including a number for Katerina Cedano, her contact at the Prado. She rubbed a finger over the name. She had been at the funeral that awful day five years ago.

  ‘This came for you,’ a young executive said, standing by her door and holding a large envelope. A red ‘confidential’ sticker had been slapped across the seal. How long had he been there for?