by Kit Brennan
The mails, of course, travel at the same rate as passengers, so it was not until several months after I had given birth that my stepfather’s reply arrived. There was a package for Sir Jasper, with apologies and instructions. Craigie sent me a separate letter, and it made me weep. He explained that he loved me very much, that he had decided upon a course of action that he hoped would satisfy all concerned, and that he had decided not to tell my mother of my predicament and its consequences. He hoped I would approve. And I did. I did not wish her to know anything about me, not if it would put me in her debt. Oh, he knew me well, and I have often wondered why. Not only the little girl I had been for the few years I lived with them, but also the changing creature I was at that time. He put himself into my position, and into my mind as he had known it and as he imagined it. He is a sterling man.
Aunt Catherine arrived; she was to take my baby. Uncle Herbert came with her, and together they did their best to stand up to Sir Jasper. It was eventually arranged: The baby was handed over and they departed. Before they did so, Catherine found me and hugged me hard. She told me the little girl would be adored and cared for as their own forever-more. She urged me to have no worries for the infant’s welfare, that she would be first and foremost in their hearts, always. Uncle Herbert, ever silent, nodded and pulled his whiskers, looking anywhere except at me. Aunt Catherine asked permission to call my baby Emma. What could I say? I hadn’t seen the baby since the day she was born. I’d barely seen her then, and I didn’t see her on the day my step-relatives took her. Catherine kissed me and whispered, “Never tell a soul, dear. This way is best.”
I was returned to the school. For months, while my breasts continued to leak and I hid the evidence as well as could be, my spirits were in the dankest, coldest cellar. I believed that the baby was better off without me. I didn’t even know how to miss her. I sat in the pews of the church in Bath and for the first time, really listened to the words. Virtually all of them were designed to punish and contain God’s handiwork, particularly the women. I believe some young souls encounter despair at an early age and spend the rest of their lives trying to escape it. And in my experience, that despair is as often caused by religion as by human wrongdoing. Those words, in that church, filled me with fear, then loathing—and finally, rebellion. I suppose, if I have one particular attribute of which I am most proud, it would be this spirit: which moves me to action, which goads me into facing it out, whatever it might be. God knows I have many black marks to my name, but this restless, questing soul of mine has saved my life. I am not saying I was sorry for myself—far from it. I was angry, that was what it was, and I wanted answers. I wanted choices. And I’d begun to understand that if I wanted those things I would have to learn how to take them.
“Señor Hernandez did not do anything to her?” I cried. “Tell me he didn’t do anything!”
“She is safe in the home of her surrogate parents,” Grimaldi said. “But. We know everything now, everything we need in order to ensure that you cooperate fully on your mission to Spain.”
This was not an outcome I had remotely anticipated. Little Emma, seven years of age, a pawn of these determined, tempestuous Europeans? It was too terrible. Travelling through Durham to Portsmouth with Thomas, and from thence to India, I had held Emma for all of ten minutes; she’d been three and wriggled as much as I had when I had been held at that age. Her hair was dark as a crow’s wing, her eyes a deep sea blue. It had frightened me how much she looked like me, but no one else had seemed to notice, certainly not Thomas. I dreamt about her for many nights after that visit, trying to imagine what life would be like if she were mine. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t really want to, certainly not in that time and place, and not with that man. But I have made a promise, to myself and to her, that if I can ever help her in her later life, I will. Although I have only seen my birth child twice, only held her once, I truly love her. Where she is, that is my centre and always will be.
Knee to knee with Juan de Grimaldi, a savagery ran through me: You cannot, you will not, use her this way! Nobody will! I swear it!
“I was always prepared to do what you ask, Señor Grimaldi. You did not need to blackmail me.”
He pursed his lips. “We have found, in the past, that it is a necessary greasing of the wheels, when the wheels get cold and begin to balk, as they always do at some point in the journey.”
After this threat, Grimaldi became even more edgy and abrupt. The task I was to perform concerned the princesses’ tutor. I was to get close to the princesses, to have them see and admire me. That was why I was to appear in La pata de cabra. The infantas would come to the theatre; I was to get myself invited to the palace. Once there, I was to meet the tutor who never let the little girls out of his sight. I needed to make him do so.
“But—?” My mind still was protecting Emma, and the instructions confused me.
“Can you still not see what service you are to render to the crown?” scolded Concepción.
“I am trying.” Their eyes were burning holes in my head.
“Seduce the man!” she screeched, as Grimaldi put his hand upon her arm.
“We know that you have a talent for it,” he added, “so don’t waste our time with cries of outrage. There are other agents in Madrid; you will meet them and be given instructions for the next plan of action after you have accomplished the first. In your case, the less you know the better.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “But what good will seducing this tutor do for your cause?”
“He will be discredited, of course, and then dismissed,” Grimaldi answered. “Prime Minister Espartero has put an extremist politician in place as tutor in order to display the righteousness and purity of his government, to show how well they are looking after the interests of the soon-to-be queen. This will prove the tutor is not pure.”
“Suppose I do what you ask.” They had cornered me and betrayed my trust. I was right to demand answers. “What will happen to me, afterwards? Will I be blamed?”
“She is worried about her reputation, Juan?” Concepción sneered, and then to me, “You should have thought about that after your first transgression. Not now, after your—what is it, Juan? Her fifth? Her eighteenth?”
“Querida, por favor . . .” Juan took his wife’s hand and led her to the door. She allowed herself to be ushered out, with one last baleful look at me to smarten me up.
Grimaldi turned and smiled. It was an empty smile that never reached his eyes. “Now then, Rosana. You see why we need a woman of your talents? Of your beauty? Of your undoubted amorousness?”
At that moment, I finally recognized his charismatic energy for what it really was: the exercise of power. He had me and he knew it.
My voice was small as I whispered, “I’m afraid for my ears.”
“I’m afraid for them too. Let me see.” He reached out, pulled a strand of fallen hair away from the side of my face. His hand smelled strongly of tobacco. I had been alone with him many times outside of that room, his arms about my waist and my laughter pealing around the empty heights of the shooting gallery. But our silly harmless intimacies had always had a playfulness about them. That was all gone. He leaned towards me and whispered, directly into my left ear, “You will not be allowed to go back, Rosana. Forwards is the only direction you can take. Your ears are not Tristany’s. They are well attached to your head, and your head to your shoulders. I know you are the one to help us return our beloved country to its rightful ruler. If not, I have a smaller box. A decorative box that will just hold two other, tiny ears, and a lock of her dark black hair. Do you understand me?”
A knock at the door made me leap to my feet, heart thundering. Grimaldi growled, “¿Quién es?”
“Padre de la Vega,” a male voice rejoined.
“Ah, good,” Grimaldi said, and opened the door. There stood an enormously tall and thin priest, holding a large silver crucifix in his hands and wearing a long, black robe. His cheeks were covered with a well-trim
med black beard, his hair tonsured. His eyes glittered as he flicked them quickly around the room, coming to rest upon me in my gaudy pink furbelows. They flicked up my length and then down, then very slowly up again, only to dart away and stare past me out the window.
Grimaldi’s smile was again a hollow one as he said, “Your travelling companion. You will be safe with him.”
Tucked into the Grimaldi’s finest carriage, we trotted along, heading out of Paris, on our way to Reuil-Malmaison to meet with the famed formerregent, Cristina. Inside the vehicle: the Spanish theatre couple, myself, and the dark piratical bodyguard from the shooting gallery, who said not a word but gazed malevolently out of the window the whole time, his hand yanking at his waxed mustache, his body redolent of sweat and garlic. I was woozy from a new dose of quinine, and for the first time I noticed that this man had a glass eye. It was incredibly distracting: The iris did not follow his facial movements, so at times it would be staring straight at me while the real eye contemplated the passing scene—or perhaps it was the other way around. It made me feel naked and vulnerable, as if that eye knew all my innermost weaknesses and fears. I could barely drag my attention away, though the rest of him lounged and lurked there like a malignity.
Concepción prepared me for the visitation by airing the essential gossip. Although officially Cristina was the royal widow of Ferdinand VII, in practice she had been with a man named Augustín Fernando Muñoz for nine years: She’d “found her destiny” with a guardsman. Early on the two had married in secret, though in the eyes of the world he was just her lover. If she had publicly acknowledged her new marriage while in Spain, Cristina would have had to give up her title as queen regent and that was something she had not wished to do. It had probably cost her the affection and advice of her elder sister, the Infanta Luisa Carlota, who’d been furious at Cristina’s remarrying beneath her. However, Muñoz was a good man (so said Concepción). The couple had recently purchased a magnificent country house called the Chateau de Malmaison, where they lived with their own set of children. “Exile sounds rather pleasant,” I remarked. Concepción smacked me with her fan and responded tartly, “No one asked your opinion.”
We arrived. “Keep your wits about you and your impertinent comments to yourself.” Admonitions, surreptitious smacking of me, and straightening of gowns.
Cristina—or María Cristina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, to give her full, long-winded title—was indeed a beautiful woman, as my earl had claimed. I bowed low and for a long time, as Concepción had schooled me, and the tall, still fair, and still blue-eyed royal personage seemed to approve. We walked the grounds first so Cristina could take the air; she was about seven months pregnant. She gestured me up to stroll beside her, which annoyed Concepción enormously, as I could tell from the indignant splutters erupting behind us. These noises ceased when a large, handsome fellow came sauntering towards us.
“This is our new little spy, my darling. Isn’t she precious?” Cristina called to her guardsman, fluttering her lashes.
“Certainly.”
“She’s leaving for Madrid muy pronto. Do you think the girls will like her?”
“Yes I do.”
“And they will trust her to help them? Keep them safe from Arguëlles?”
“Indeed.”
“That settles it. You always know best.”
If this was his role—to agree with whatever she said and sire a load of children—I thought it couldn’t be too onerous. He was wearing the jewels Concepción had told me about: the late king’s scarfpin and several of his gigantic rings. I eyed Muñoz slyly, then looked away quickly because I caught him doing the same to me.
“Enough! I am puffed!” Her Majesty announced, looping her arm through mine. “Let us go inside.” As we sashayed across the crushed golden stones, I wondered if I should give her warm greetings from my lust-addled earl. Would it be appropriate?
“Your Majesty,” I hesitated, “I know someone who wishes you only the best, and who asked me—if I was lucky enough to meet you—to be remembered to you.”
“Oh goody,” she trilled. “I love admirers. Who is it?”
“James Howard Harris. In Naples? He is now 3rd Earl of Malmesbury and a member of Parliament.”
“Hmm.” She frowned as she thought.
“It was quite long ago, the year your engagement to the king was announced. There was a certain . . . button? Which he recalls particularly.”
I loved the light that came into her eyes; as she remembered, they seemed to suddenly glow from within like sun through ice. “That funny, short man. With his elaborate buttons. And his trousers!” Her laugh was infectious as she leaned upon me, whispering conspiratorially, “My mother had turned around because I was lingering to talk with him, and all she could see was the mighty bump. She was so scandalized that I got a fit of the giggles, not even halfway around the room full of people to meet, and I had to leave, drink three glasses of water, and lie down. All I could think about the rest of that afternoon was imagining what had happened to the poor man’s bump!”
Malmesbury would have been so happy to know that golden Cristina remembered his adulation and had thought so long and hard about his bump!
Indoors, we sat in a remarkable room filled with flowers, art, and musical instruments. With my head still buzzing from the quinine, I imagined I mightn’t have been the soul of discretion in bringing up the earl and his button, but he seemed to have done me a favour—royal Cristina and I had sparked. I was sure I would need all the friends in high places that I could get.
“My dear señora,” Cristina cooed, turning to Concepción, “I remember how well you enjoy spending time with our children. Would you be so kind?” She put her jewelled hand upon her paramour’s arm. “Encanto, perhaps you could escort her?”
This unexpected plan of action did not suit Doña Rodríguez, I could tell, but she swallowed her chagrin and stepped out with Muñoz.
“Now then, Juan,” Cristina said, glancing at her highly buffed fingernails, “explain to me the puzzling reply you sent back this morning. I wish for immediate action, and know the time is ripe. That fine agent we met with last year, he has sent back astonishing reports!”
“Ah, Your Majesty,” Juan demurred. “That is the thing. There will be no further reports from that quarter.”
“Why ever not? I haven’t given him leave to desert me.”
“He is dead.”
“Diablo. I see . . . And you’re sure of this?”
“Terribly sure.”
Without missing a beat, she turned her penetrating gaze upon me. “This one has agreed to everything?”
Juan gave me an admonitory glance, then answered, “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“And she understands the political climate?”
“As much as she needs to, Your Majesty,” Grimaldi answered.
“Not really, Highness,” I interjected, “I am ready to get started though of course somewhat nervous—” I was babbling, then got hold of myself—“but I know next to nothing about the people involved, nor how a court functions, nor—”
Grimaldi looked at the carpet and frowned, his lips tightening further as Cristina patted my hand and said, “I agree with your concern to know more, little spy. You must anticipate the personalities you will encounter. Men always forget that because it does not interest them. So.” She settled herself, index finger to her lip for a moment to think, then began. “The prime minister, General Baldomero Espartero, is a cunning man as well as an excellent soldier. During the war, he was not involved in politics; he was my finest commander. His tactical moves were full of luck and bravado, which he would quickly follow up with force. Fundamentally though, Espartero is a progresisto and I did not realize this in time. I made him head of the government, but in that I was wrong. Spain needs to be liberalized, yes—and I have certainly done my share to promote such a state—but I am a moderada. Espartero goes too far too fast.”
“Your Majesty—” Juan interjected.
&nb
sp; “Let me finish this, dear Señor Grimaldi,” she said, “I shall try to be brief,” and she turned her pale eyes back to me. “Six years ago my worst troubles began. That is when the sergeants—the military—rose against me, storming my palace at La Granja one night, drunk and dangerous, and threatening to massacre everyone in it if I did not agree to their demands. I remained calm, bowed to their wishes, and restored the constitution of 1812, which is what they wanted. When news of their treacherous but successful bullying reached the capital, the chief moderado ministers—who had drafted the new constitution—knew that they must flee for their lives.”
“Some were later captured,” Grimaldi growled, “their heads, ears, and hands cut off and publicly displayed in Madrid.”
I shuddered at the vision conjured—and the ears in the box.
Cristina continued, “Then I made my mistake. There was no other strong military personage to keep the populace in check the way he could, so I appointed Espartero commander in chief. Don Carlos the pretender might have won the war then if he’d made use of the opportunity all this chaos afforded, but he has always dithered; he wants to be absolute monarch or nothing. Carlos was defeated and sent into exile. But the successes went to Espartero’s head. Suddenly there were many conditions he wished to impose upon me! Me!” She fluttered her fan violently, shaking her head at the mere thought. “I made him a count, I made him a duke, but I could never make him a gentleman.”
“Traitor,” came from Grimaldi, gloomily.
“The idea of holding the regency as a puppet of that man and the progressives was abhorrent to me. I preferred to abdicate.”
“And see what a mess he has made, Your Majesty!” Grimaldi couldn’t contain himself any longer. He leapt up and started hurling himself about. “He is inexperienced and markedly authoritarian! And the tutor—”
