Three-Cornered Halo

by Christianna Brand

  “But you say that the sliding door will be undetectable.”

  “Certainly it will. But if he enquires and learns even that I have handled the thurible, if he only faintly suspects me—Senorita you do not know Juan Lorenzo!—I should die.”

  “Oh, nonsense; you can’t execute a man on a suspicion.”

  Tomaso who had just arranged ignoble death for a cousin and friend on no suspicion at all, could hardly be expected to subscribe to this. “I tell you, it is certain, from the moment the faintest notion enters his head that I have touched the censer, my days are numbered. But you, Senorita—what danger is there to you? Who for a moment will suspect that an English tourista should involve herself in this?”

  “Who indeed?” said poor Winsome, bitterly.

  “You will go to the Duomo, an innocent tourist, interested as thousands have been before you in the Cellini masterpiece. An appointment has been made, frankly and freely before all the world, for the thing to be privately shown to you. There is nothing in that, it is not a show-piece always on view, it is a cathedral treasure in the Archbishop’s keeping. The Archbishop will show it to you, he will hand you the base of it and put the rest in its case and lock it away. You will carry the base away in a large handbag common to all the touristi; you will call at my shop, preferably with a friend or two, you will place some small order: while you are occupied, I shall remove the base of the censer from your bag. Later you will come again, to collect your order, we will proceed in reverse; on your way home, you will slip into the cathedral to light a candle before Juanita’s shrine; the Arcivescovo spends half the day there, at his prayers.” And she would be very careful—very careful, insisted Tomaso, not to drop or knock the censer on the way back. The—er—the pellet of scent might roll out of its position: it was of importance, enormous importance, that it should not. And then—her task would be done; from then, her role was finished, there would be nothing for her to do but to stick to her story: she had been, as a tourist, to see the treasure, she had looked, admired, rhapsodised, and come away. “What−ever may happen, Senorita, stick to this: and so shall I on your behalf and so will the old man. Whatever may happen.” He repeated it once again with a strange intensity. “Whatever may happen, deny all knowledge of the thurible.…”

  But on the whole, thought Tomaso, it was not likely that the Senorita would be eager to broadcast her connection with what was all set to happen, three days from now.

  From behind the belt of trees came the sound of music, the sound of voices and laughter, muted to sweetness; ahead lay the starlit mirror of the sea. A fleet of little fishing boats had come out and now crept by twos and twos across the dark water, the lamps at their prows throwing down twin circular patches of light that lay on the dark water like golden sovereigns on a cloth of black velvet. Under the split grey boughs of the olives the lovers lay whispering together unashamed and unshaming; over all lay the silver radiance of the moon. He rose to his feet and held out a hand to her. “Come, Senorita, I take you now back to your friends.” And as they walked back through the olive groves, he took her arm, leaned forward to peer, with quizzical laughter, into her frightened face. “Senorita, you are not smiling, you are not happy: is this not fun, our plan of naughtiness, will not much good come from it, for you, for me, for all of us, all San Juan, all the Christian world …?” He rallied her, laughing still. “There is no danger. It is an adventure, a frolic, you should be gay. Think how we shall smile behind our hands when the smoke goes up, the rosy smoke rising up from the golden censer, Juanita’s sign! And for you—there is no danger; for me—ah! it is for me, if anyone, to pull a long, white, anxious face. But I do not, I am gay. And I have my plans. I have borrowed a speedboat from a friend on the mainland, it is hidden away in the reeds down on the shores of the Toscanita plain. I shall fill it with all my treasures from the Joyeria (not the snuff-boxes, the Grand Duke and his politio will be welcome to those); and if there is danger, I must cut my losses and fly away from San Juan for ever.” But he needed help, he said, pathetically, strolling along beside her, his brown hand at her horny elbow, helping her along. It was tricky work transporting his precious things to the boat, he must not be seen too often going down to Toscanita alone. “Could you not express a wish, Senorita, to see the Toscanita plain? It is beautiful down there: I would offer to escort you, we could stuff our pockets and bags with jewels, we could hide them away in the boat, making big pretence of a picnic, of seeing the sights—it would be fun!” She did not answer, only dumbly shook her head, stumbling on across the olive roots, across the rock plateau and down the steps, plunging into the crowds that rolled and danced between herself and her goal. And he smiled and murmured, teasingly, and followed her and at last brought her to where Miss Cockrill stood looking on at the dancing with the rest of the grouppa; and handed her over tenderly to the Major’s care. “Sir, Senorita Cockereel, I bring back to you the Senorita: she has been lost in the crowd, they are rough and noisy, some perhaps are drunk … Poor lady,” said Tomaso, all impersonal concern, “I met her by chance and she begged me to conduct her back to you. She is distraught.” He bowed and flourished, kissed hands all round, bade them his florid, Juanese good nights. “And, Senorita—you will not forget? You have made an appointment tomorrow at the Duomo with the Arcivescovo. He is expecting you. Alas, after all, I cannot come with you, but I have arranged it. You will not let me down?”

  “No,” said Winsome. She stood staring stupidly into his face, wearily twitching into place her disordered dress. “Tomorrow at eleven. Yes. I’ll be there. I won’t let you down.”

  “What on earth have you been doing, Winsome?” said Cousin Hat. “You look like a demented hare.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  NEITHER Miss Cockrill nor, it must be confessed, the devoted Major, had been consumed with anxiety for Winsome during her absence. The Major and Cousin Hat had been bidden to spend the evening in exalted company and were wrapt in secret misgivings of their own. For a message had come from the Grand Duke. El Exaltida now learned for the first time, said the grey secretary, appearing suddenly before them, bowing obsequiously, that a sister of his excellent friend Inspector Cockereel was on the island. La Bellissima had requested that Miss Cockereel be invited for coffee and a liqueur after supper, at the pavilion. At the same time, said Tabaqui with more bowing, El Exaltida would be happy to entertain Miss Cockereel’s niece (“Cousin,” said Miss Cockrill rather crossly: a humping great niece of thirty-eight was more than one cared to submit to—people were always making this mistake) and his friend Mr Cecil, and would be much gratified if Major Bull, representing the English visitors at present on the island, would care to join them.… Any anxiety for Winsome was therefore confined largely to whether or not she would return from wherever she might have got to, in time to avail herself of this invitation. On the whole, Cousin Hat secretly rather hoped she would not. A very little encouragement and Winsome would be rechristening her budgerigars Exaltida and Bellissima; and Cousin Hat remembered the slender creature sitting like a figure from a tapestry on the flower-bright bank of the little stream and knew that she could not bear that that clear-cut moment of romance and pathos should be smudged over with the vapourings of Winsome’s sensibility. If only she would not get back in time! But here she was, white-faced, eyes popping, covered in olive leaves, and looking quite mad. “Well, come along, Winsome, you’re just in time. We’re invited up to the pavilion.”

  Mr Cecil was in a bit of a taking. “One does wish one had known!” One would not have sported one’s Juanese get-up, he said; the lavender flannels, perhaps, and one of the hand-made silk shirts (rumour had it that he ran them up himself, in the evenings, at home), and a madly chaste tie. The Grand Duke never wore Juanese costume unless, as on this fiesta occasion, he had to: and what would he think of Mr Cecil’s having done it from choice? Major Bull looked down complacently at his own stubby legs, twin pillars of sartorial sobriety in their stout grey flannels; and at the well-controlled curve of
brass-buttoned blue blazer above. Miss Cockrill pushed stray hairs up under the squashed straw hat and gave a twitch or two to the cardboard linen dress. “Do tidy yourself, Winsome, what on earth have you been doing? You look as though someone had been tumbling you under the olives.”

  If only you knew, thought Winsome drearily; but, brushing aimlessly at the folk-weave skirt where still a few dry olive-leaves clung, she slightly amended the note within her own mind. If only you knew! Poor, plain, despised, whimsical Winsome, in league with a gay young man in a piece of nefarious nonsense that yet was fraught with the perils of—of blackmail.… If only Cousin Hat knew! Gone, at least, would be the superior smile. I wonder, thought Winsome, what you would say if you knew..…

  But Miss Cockrill at present had other things on her mind. “Haven’t you got rather more to be anxious about?” she said to Mr Cecil, walking with him along the narrow path cleft for them through the excited crowds, by the palace guards. “Than about your clothes, I mean. What about—when you called out this afternoon?”

  Mr Cecil turned pale. “You don’t think my voice would have been recognisable?”

  Miss Cockrill privately thought Mr Cecil’s voice would be recognisable piping up from the yawning graves on the Judgement Day. She said, however, only that there could not be many people on the island who would have remarked that the goings-on were not quite up to Wykehamist standards. “Though I respect you for it: you probably saved that old man’s life.”

  “But if the Grand Duke had been … I mean … He’d just have sent for me alone. He wouldn’t have asked you too.”

  “Perhaps he’s lumping us all together; plus the Major ‘representing the British on the island’—and he’s going to chop off all our heads, for your interference.” But that reminded her of La Bellissima and of a danger not remote and not funny at all. And there was still the matter of the old Archbishop. Something must be done. And in this evening’s visit lay, almost certainly, their only chance of intercession. “Seriously—why do you think we’ve been asked? Why’s Dick Bull been asked?”

  Mr Cecil wriggled after her through the narrow lane of people, his pale face alternately lit to yellow brightness and plunged into deep shadow as the torches dimmed and flared. “You don’t really think it’s anything to do with oneself?”

  “No, no, nonsense; he’s probably secretly thankful to you for stopping him.”

  “It could be. I’ve observed that there’s a very thin line between Juan the Pirate and Juan the Old Wykehamist. I think we might suitably offer a tiny prayer,” said Mr Cecil, “that Winchester will be in the ascendant tonight.”

  The pavilion was delicious, a miniature palatio, its central dome glimmering in the moonlight delicate as an inverted snowdrop above its cloistered patio and cool white colonnades. It was all white: white and silver. White lilies scented the patio, a white peacock strutted the marble-flagged floor, white rugs with a silver sheen of silk were scattered beneath white-painted tables and chairs; a fountain splashed silver over white marble dolphins that tumbled with white marble babies in its silver bowl. Only the eyes of Cristallo, the cat, were brilliantly blue, staring unblinkingly at the white peacock, from where it lay, still as a carved thing, paws turned inward, in its collar of pearls.

  El Exaltida was sitting there with the Patriarch and La Bellissima; he a black blot in the embroidered jacket and knee-breeches with the great cloak flung across his breast like a brigand of old, she cool and slender in her narrow green silk, the embroidered lace veil hung over her shining head; the Patriarch in skull cap and cassock of creamy white serge. In such surroundings, Mr Cecil’s extravaganza came into its own, it was the blazer and flannels, the linen and crushed straw that looked odd and out of place. They made their obeisances and sat down awkwardly, Cousin Hat and the Grand Duke by chance a little apart. A young woman handed round black coffee and a tray of little cakes. The Grand Duke poured liqueurs, the tiny glasses lost in his great, ringed hands. “Try a little cheesecake, Miss Cockrill, Miss Foley. They are very good.” He put out a hand and caught the girl by a fold of her skirt and held her for a moment, a prisoner. “She tells me she makes them herself.” He said in English: “A charming creature? Like a young fawn? She is my wife’s new maid-of-honour.”

  Major Bull looked at the young fawn and hastily averted his eyes. Last night, it had fallen to the Major, as a conscientious courier, to continue with the gentlemen of his party their tour of the island, when the weaker vessels, exhausted by the day’s sight-seeing, had retired to bed; and, inflamed perhaps by the pressure of Winsome’s hand on his sleeve as he squired her round the narrow streets, he had taken the bold resolution to avail himself of the comforts offered by their ultimate—indeed, as soon as the ladies had left them, their immediate—port of call. The comforts had turned out to be, alas! all of his own offering: a shoulder to weep on, a handkerchief (non-returnable) to sniffle into, a heart to confide in: jealous stepmother, by Jove, poor-girl-driven-out-of-home, boy-friend-refusing-marriage-till-dowry-forthcoming, eckcekra, eckcekra … Plus a little something extra towards the dowry, and an undertaking not to tell La Patrona. But there had been a charming little feast afterwards, in the general patio, all traces of tears now dried away: the wine of the country, pressed (apparently about two days earlier) from the grapes of the Toscanita plain, the inevitable chestnuts in honey, the dried figs, almond-stuffed, the brandied sultanas in lemon leaves: the little cheesecakes … And now … The Major’s healthy pink face turned two shades duskier, leaving the moustache marooned like a white ship afloat on a round red pond; his prominent pale blue eyes swivelled glassily, he clasped his hands together till the knuckles cracked. Lorenna, reverencing before him with her dish of cheesecakes, took time off for a moment from her bewildering new duties to wonder if the poor gentleman were about to throw a cataleptico. She seemed dimly to recognise his face, but—one saw so many. A client, perhaps?

  Miss Cockrill, also, was exceedingly startled. A new lady-in-waiting—introduced, apparently, in the course of this very afternoon, to La Bellissima’s court! Watching covertly, she saw the great eyes, shadowed by the lace veil, turned to the girl and back to hers with an urgent appeal. She took a decision. She looked Lorenna up and down with a cool appraisal. “Yes, indeed: quite a pretty gel.” She eyed the Grand Duke limpidly. “By no means a Plain Jane. And looks—how shall I put it?—as though she could keep her head.”

  You could see the quick flicker of appreciation, of calculation; an almost instant recognition of the truth. He knew that she knew. He gave her a small, ironical bow. “An admirable quality.”

  “And rare among pretty young women.…”

  “Who won’t do as they’re told,” he amended.

  So it was open warfare. “This particular pretty girl,” said Cousin Hat, eyeing the new handmaid reflectively, “would she do as she was told—more than any other?”

  “More than any other—who can say? But—I think, perhaps, yes. She at least would not suffer, you see,” said the Grand Duke, sweetly, “from conflicting counsel. Her mother is dead.”

  “A young girl, of course, will look to her mother for guidance.…”

  “And not only to her mother, it seems?” said the Grand Duke: not so sweetly.

  “My own advice in such cases,” said Cousin Hat, hastily, “would be that a girl should certainly obey her husband in all respects.”

  He bowed again. “I am very happy to hear it. Let us hope it meets with a better response than is usually the fate of advice.”

  “Time will show,” said Miss Cockrill. She repeated it significantly. “Time will show.”

  He took up a cheesecake and sat looking down at it, balanced like an outsize crumb in the huge palm of his hand. “You think so, do you? Just a question of time?”

  “And of everyone playing his part,” said Miss Cockrill. She went a little red. “Well, I didn’t mean exactly …” In her confusion, she too picked up a cheesecake; but, recollecting herself, put it back on her plate and pus
hed it ostentatiously to one side. “If you will forgive me, Exaltida—I don’t think I care very much for these.”

  “Don’t you really? You surprise me,” said the Grand Duke. He threw back his head, opened his mouth and tossed in the little cake; and, catching the passing Lorenna by her skirt again, drew her to him. “Bring me more of your delectables, Senorita Seymour,” he said.

  El Patriarca, meanwhile, was making civil conversation with Winsome Foley, Mr Cecil and the Major. His Beatitude spoke little English but was able to hope that their visitors had had a sympathetic day? The ceremonies were most anti-quatable, most venerably: no doubt they had found it all extremely buffant?

  Quite, quite madly buffant, said Mr Cecil.

  “There are in Los Caprichos of Goya—but more late—many …” He gave up the attempt. “Pardon me, if I speak in Juanese. There are, I was saying, in the later works of Goya many references to the Domenica di Boia, the Hangman’s Sunday. The ‘Caza de Dientes,’ for example—the woman pulling teeth from a hanging man. This was a common practice here on the island in the old days: it was the fashion then to have the front teeth studded with small jewels.…”

  Mr Cecil indulged in a momentary vision of glittering smiles in Mayfair; but dismissed it immediately. The very essence of la mode was, and must be, from the couturier’s point of view at any rate, mutability: and diamond-set front teeth would be far too permanent. Unless, of course … But then, falsies! Would it be worth it? Besides, who was he to put money into the mouths of jewellers and dentists—by putting it, he thought wittily, into those of his clients? No, no: a tiny pearl, perhaps, in one’s own eye-tooth might be a publicity talking-point, but even that did rather tie one. “I don’t see quite how they winkled the jewels out?”