Whip Smart

by Kit Brennan

  “Do you know what has happened?” I cried. “Get up, you must help me, we have to go—”

  “The military have just been here,” the Jesuit said, severely. “They were looking for a certain Patrizia Olivares, actress. Always you involve us, always you say too much. We told them we have never heard of her, but my brother has now come under suspicion.”

  “Oh my God, oh Ventura—”

  “Don’t torture her, Miguel.” Ventura looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “It’s over. They’re dead.”

  I sank to the floor. I was too late. And it swept over me with the force of an ocean: My love, my gorgeous Diego, was no longer in the world. The world was emptied, barren and bleak. There was nothing in it.

  “We should never have trusted a woman like you,” Father Miguel was saying, the words stinging with a fearsome rasp. “I tried to warn Grimaldi. Adding insult to injury, only yesterday news of your divorce arrived from Hernandez. It was heard in court, just before Christmas. It is done; you are free.” Something in his hateful tone now made me look up, miserably. “Free, that is, as a woman such as yourself understands it. Shamelessly.”

  “Miguel, stop. It’s neither the time nor the place.”

  “She must understand her guilt in this matter!” the Jesuit screamed at his brother, before spraying me again with his vitriol. “Distractions! Seductions! Women like you are poison to men of integrity and resolution. You suck the marrow from us; you make us weak!”

  Ventura was looking at me with clouded eyes. He hadn’t the strength to stop his brother’s tirade, and I could barely decipher the words, demolished as I was by grief and remorse.

  “The military also asked about a traitor they shot dead late last night. They believe you to be connected. I suspect it was Coria, was it not?” The Jesuit was almost prancing with malice. “I’ve revised my opinion, Ventura. This female and he were in league together! They’ve been spying upon us, for their own treacherous purposes!”

  I leapt to my feet and would have torn the beard from his abominable cheeks, if Ventura hadn’t jumped between us and pushed us apart with a roar. “Have some respect! Our brothers are dead!”

  Father Miguel turned away in disgust, and I again sank to the floor. My head was throbbing and I thought I’d be sick: Someone please wake me from this horror. Round and round the mulberry bush—

  “¡Puta!” the padre spat.

  —pop goes the weasel. It didn’t matter; none of it mattered. I put my head down on the floor and wept. And sobbed. What did I care what either of them thought? My stallion, dead? My heart cracked in half.

  Ventura was saying, “This operation has been a disaster from the beginning. Her Majesty María Cristina blows hot and cold, and we ride the storms.” Then, perhaps to himself, “All we can hope is that Grimaldi will return to Spain. We need him. Maybe he will come back—by invitation, now. Return as a statesman.”

  I stood up, took two steps towards him, and slapped Ventura’s face, hard. Then I turned on my heels and, once again, I ran.

  This time, my feet knew where I needed to go before I did. It was difficult to breathe with the conflicting emotions reverberating through me: load my pistols and go back to his offices, shoot the white-haired fiend? Return to the theatre, shoot Father Miguel at point-blank range in the head? Such mad thoughts. I stood gasping outside Diego’s home, asking myself what he would have wanted me to do. Then I rushed inside, crying out to his manservant that we were all undone, that his master was dead: “Executed without mercy, along with General de la Concha. Tell the others, and look out for yourselves!” His frightened eyes told me all I needed to know: He, and the rest of the household, would be gone within the hour.

  I hurried into our bedchamber, not looking anywhere but at the wardrobe, where I yanked out a pair of Diego’s everyday trousers and a loose white shirt. I pulled them on, then stuffed the toes of a pair of his boots and jammed my feet in. I knotted my hair up on top of my head, crying and muttering desperately to myself, ransacking his things—that smelled of him, that remembered his shape!—until I discovered a soft felt hat, which I rammed on my head. Grabbed his favourite dark cloak and tied it on, for the cold. Then I pulled the faux book from the drawer where it lay, with the second pistol inside, took the first one out of the muff and placed it with the other. Ensured that the powder bag was full, found several other caps and loader, closed up the faux book and put it into a leather bag with a strap. Rifling through another drawer where Diego kept a stash of money, I threw everything that was there into the bag. From a drawer where I kept my jewels, I hesitated briefly, then pulled out my favourite peridot earbobs and stuffed them into one pocket, the diamond necklace from the earl in the other—to trade for cash, should I run short. By the window was a pitcher and basin; I washed my face, scrubbing off the remains of the evening’s makeup with a shudder of revulsion. Then I ran out of the room, down to the kitchen, grabbed a loaf of bread. Go, bandita. Don’t look back.

  I set off down the street, consciously lengthening my stride and trying to keep grief from consuming me. Not far now, only a few long blocks: Look normal, like an ordinary young man going about his business. I could still hear the noise of a crowd towards the palace, near the plaza. What is happening, I wondered, and then thought, it doesn’t matter, because I can’t prevent it. I can’t stop the world’s ending. Diego is gone.

  Dashing the last few yards, I hurled myself through the doorway, closing it behind me with gratitude and unbearable anguish: the scent of horses and grass, forever connected now with him. One of them whickered softly, anticipating oats. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light seeping through wooden slats, I saw Lindo throw his head over the side of his stall. The sight of his large, black eyes gleaming was enough to set me going again.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot you!” a woman’s voice called, high with fear.

  I threw my hands in the air. “I’ve come for my horse. Please. I’ll be gone in a moment.”

  A head peeped around the edge of Conquistador’s stall—Matilde. Though I’d tried to disguise my voice, she’d obviously recognized it. The baby lay in a sling round her neck, and when she saw it was indeed me, she slumped back against a bale of hay, cradling the child and keening. So she knew.

  “Matilde, how can we bear it? It has all gone so wrong.” I knelt down beside her. The infant’s face was unbelievably peaceful, not yet privy to all the world’s woes.

  “My cousin.” I could barely hear her, the voice coming deep and thick. “He’s in the army. That’s how I got myself into this mess—with him. It seemed like a good idea, a way to escape poverty in Figueres. What a fool.”

  “Your cousin?” I couldn’t follow where her thoughts were taking her.

  “That is the horror of it. He is lying on my bed, totally destroyed, vomiting his guts out. Soon he’ll have to return to duty, as if nothing has happened. That bastard, that despot! To do such a thing! Monster!” Hunched in a fierce and protective ball around the child, her face was contorted with hate.

  “Espartero?”

  “Of course!”

  I asked her to tell me everything. It came out in a torrent.

  “My cousin was woken in the middle of the night, told to join his regiment, and from there, straws were drawn. They didn’t know what they were supposed to do, but from the rank smell in the air from the higher-ups’ sweat, it seemed it was a terrible task. Ladrón drew a short straw. He and eleven others, muskets loaded, marched to the square in the middle of the military headquarters, the high-walled one. Two men were being dragged out, hands in irons behind their backs. Nobody knew what they had done. And then Ladrón recognized them.”

  “Diego and Manuel.”

  Matilde covered her eyes. After a moment, I reached out and held her. At first she tried to push me away, then she sagged into my arms and held on tight, the baby cuddled between us, rocked back and forth in a sea of grief.

  After a long silence, she continued, her voice a steady monotone of heartache. “Lad
rón said he could see their faces clearly, see them shift from confusion to disbelief when they realized what an armed guard of twelve must mean for them. The square where they were standing had two thick posts towards one side, where they were to be tied. As the guards who had charge of them tried to shove them along, Diego broke free and called, ‘You know us, brothers. You can’t do this thing; we haven’t been tried!’ The guard smashed him in the face with his rifle.”

  “Oh God,” I moaned.

  “Manuel appealed to them too. ‘The prime minister doesn’t want anyone to know of his vicious retaliation, but you must tell them! If this is to happen, you must not keep it quiet!’ He was beaten as well. Ladrón and the others were completely dismayed—de León and de la Concha were their comrades in arms, their superior officers. You can imagine their horror. They began to mutter, and several, to cry.”

  Baby Matilde’s eyes fluttered open and looked up at us with an innocent trust. Tears were falling on her upturned cheeks like warm rain.

  “The commanding officer in charge of the firing squad furiously called them to order. Just then, Diego, blood streaming from his face, told his guards to give them a moment, as gentlemen. He told them that he and Concha could now see no respite would come, but that the soldiers must not suffer the guilt that should be reserved for the prime minister. ‘Let me speak with them for a moment, to reassure them,’ that’s what he said.” Matilde’s voice grew slower and heavier with each phrase. “So Diego’s guard stepped back, rifle aimed to kill. Ladrón says Diego walked steadily over to the twelve soldiers, asking the first one to reach inside his uniform jacket and pull out a box. He told the man to open it, and inside were a dozen of the smallest, finest cigars, the ones he orders direct from South America. The sweet-smelling ones.”

  We were nodding, heads together, eyes closed. Her voice went on.

  “He walked with that first man down the line of men, with individual words and a cigar for each. To all he said, ‘These were for the celebration, afterwards. But now they’re for you, brothers. Just do us a favour, don’t miss.’ And he grinned. Manuel bowed to them, adding, ‘Do your job, but don’t believe the propaganda that will cover this up. Be swift, if you love us.’ The commanding officer yelled for order, and the two were yanked back towards the thick posts and tied there. Each man on the firing squad placed the cigar he was given against his heart; each man was peering through tears and pain. No one understood why this order had been given, no one would tell them—not their job to know, just to obey. The order was given, they shot in unison, six to each prisoner. And they were dead.”

  I tried to imagine the cousin’s sick terror, to take my mind from the images that were flooding my brain. The philosophy behind a squad of men is that no one man will suffer full responsibility. But in a case like this? Where they know, and admire, the men they are killing? I was sick too with my own understanding that, thanks to my continued questioning, the bodyguard Javier had reported his uneasiness, which led them to step up their watch. Therefore they were ready for the generals when they came.

  “You know Manuel was rich? He was an aristocrat,” Matilde was whispering. “That is why he couldn’t acknowledge me as his wife, why we never married.” Oh, the loneliness in her voice. Though Concha had abandoned her, she would never besmirch her memory of him, not even to herself. “But how he was longing for . . . He was about to step into his title, Marqués del Duero. I can’t bear, for his sake, that he never will . . .”

  And Diego, the astounding, piratical hellion. That charisma, all the bunched sinew and brawn, that grin, gone? How to believe it. How to face a monstrosity. To know a man so intimately, to have his flesh under your fingers, feel his warm muscles under the skin, cooling after your pleasure—only moments ago! His heart thumping under your ear, its pulse beating in his throat, and to think of that heart with six bullets through it, stopped at the whim of some terrible old man. Oh, no, it was not to be borne!

  At that moment, the baby reached up her fat hand and patted my cheek. It was the softest, sweetest thing I have ever felt in my life. I thought of all the children Diego had dreamed of, never to be born. A soft life in the country, his army days behind him. It was inconceivable to think of moving on, moving past this. But for the three of us crouched in the stable, the present and future were pressing hard. We would have to go; we had to get moving. Impossible, unimaginable. Somewhere that adored body lay (crumpled, bloody), and it would not be treated with reverence, with esteem. But it was only a body now. (I wanted to howl! It was his body!) The essential Diego would never return, light a cigar, then flash his saucy grin, strip off his trousers, and throw me on the bed . . .

  We have to go.

  How quickly we switch from being all present and future—to all past. And how cruelly life kicks us back into action, those of us left standing. It is brutal and I’ve never understood it, how we keep going.

  Matilde’s thoughts were echoing mine. “We must leave here; they’ll come looking, the army. How did you get away?”

  “I heard Espartero’s orders, and I ran. A young man hid me. They came searching for me—or for the actress who’d been in his bed.”

  “So they’ve traced you to Diego? They know of our hand in the plot?”

  “Not yet, I don’t think so.”

  “They will.” She jumped to her feet with desperate energy. “We must split up. I must steal one of these horses—”

  I grabbed her arm and turned her to face me. “Matilde, no. Please. We can go together, do a reverse of the way we entered the country. I’ll be your husband.”

  She looked me up and down at this and gave a snort. “No one will believe for an instant that you are a man.” She pointed at my heaving chest, then at the breeches I was wearing. “Breasts you cannot hide. Hips of a woman. Swaying walk, pretty face. It’s out of the question.”

  “Matilde, I beg you,” and I truly was. “Without you, I’m lost. I can’t find my way out of a hatbox. You are the most skillful guide I’ve ever met. You’re heading north?”

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “I need to get back to Paris as soon as possible, and then London.”

  “I’ll go only as far as Figueres,” she said. “I want to disappear.”

  “Not through the mountains? If I had the money to pay you?”

  She shook her head, then added disbelievingly, “You’re going to face Grimaldi? After everything that’s happened?”

  “I have no choice. I need to assure myself that he has released me. My little one’s life depends upon it.” I cradled baby Matilde’s head for a moment, and this she understood.

  “So Diego said, I remember.” She asked no more questions, but added quietly, “Then hurry. We can’t take Conquistador, he will be recognized.”

  “We have to take him. Diego loved him,” I argued. “Espartero is crazy enough to kill even the horse of the man he has murdered. His blood lust is up, and nothing belonging to Diego or Concha is safe this day.”

  Lips between her teeth at the thought, Matilde nodded again and said, “Then cut the mane, the tail. Disguise him as much as we can.” I could hear Lindo moving uneasily in his stall. Among the tackle hanging on hooks we found shears, and by luck they were very sharp. Quieting the stallion, trying to keep our nervous energy from infecting the horses any more than it had, I stroked the glorious chestnut neck and spoke to him softly. Matilde clipped and then clipped even shorter the entire mane and forelock, until none was left. Then with one motion of the shears, the stallion’s fine tail, which Diego had groomed daily with almost erotic pleasure. A tail which swept the ground, thick and russet in colour, now only as long as the tailbone. A swishy stub of its former self. The horse looked around as if he too was surprised. “Put it all in here,” I said, holding out the leather bag with my pistols, the money and the bread. “If we leave it behind, they’ll know.” The mound of coarse hair filled the bag.

  “You’ll ride Conquistador, then?” she asked. “He’s jumpy, and with
the baby—”

  “Sí. Take Lindo.”

  We saddled and bridled the horses without further discussion. Round and round the mulberry bush, beating its refrain in my half-broken head, inside my cracked heart. Once everything was ready, Matilde told me to pull off my shirt. Confused, I did so; she untied a scarf she had at her waist and bound my breasts with it. It was unexpectedly painful, but I could see that it helped. I drew the shirt back on and left it untucked. She reached up and shoved the hat further down on my head, then made sure the infant was securely fastened in the sling round her body. We led Lindo and Conquistador outside, swung up onto the saddles, and galloped away.

  We rode as swiftly as we could out of the city without breaking into anything more than a sedate canter in the few stretches where there was no carriage traffic. Conquistador was skittish and required all my concentration to keep him from shying, rearing, and snorting at various surprises along the way: a baker moving his cart, a yapping dog called to heel by its young mistress, a loud drunk being chivvied from his pavement bed by the boot of a merchant. Lindo cantered sedately alongside, steady and true; he was the kind of horse who could maintain a comfortable, easy canter at a slow pace while Conquistador minced about between trots, side-steps, and a bone-crunching stifflegged gallop, seemingly at his own whim. My mind, meanwhile, was playing out all sorts of scenarios: Espartero was, at this moment, squeezing the truth out of Ventura—or, more likely, his slimy priest brother, who would happily squeal my involvement with Diego. The prime minister’s men would be sent immediately to Diego’s home and to the stable. Or perhaps Espartero would march there himself, blazing with fury and desire for further revenge. Did they kill women with the same unseemly haste? What the hell had the devil Coria been doing in the government offices—following me again? At least he was dead; I had nothing further to fear on that score. Did we leave anything behind to call attention to our departure, besides, of course, the missing horses? Oh God, Lindo, could he be traced to me? Don’t think about it, no importa, keep riding. My head had begun pounding again and occasionally I’d be overcome with dizziness, swaying alarmingly in the saddle.