by Kit Brennan
“Hold on,” Matilde warned, “don’t fall, or we’ll be found out.”
Grimly, I obeyed, willing the muscular stallion to calm himself, which of course did not help: He was his own creature, and Diego’s, used to bravura behaviour and delighting the multitudes. How does a horse know that he is beautiful? Somehow he does, and, like humans, it goes to his head.
What with increased mercantile traffic in the later hours of the morning, it took us until the sun was nearly at its height to reach the outskirts of Madrid. Luckily, it was a mild and sunny day; we both had cloaks for the coldness of the night slung across the back of the saddles. I stopped to buy the horses oats, and Matilde and I ate the loaf of bread. A drink at the trough for them, sips from the tap for us, and a quick feed for the baby, then we were off again.
On the main road now, we made up for lost time. The horses were fresh and eager to run, and we let them. I don’t know how many miles we rode that day, but there must have been many. We passed through Guadalajara in mid-afternoon. All of us were exhausted by the time we entered a final village, purchased feed and human supplies, and found our way to an out-of-the-way farm building as the sun was setting. We settled the horses in a large pen—no need for hobbles tonight—and lay out our cloaks on old straw nearby. For myself, I was feeling somewhat more hopeful. Now, with the miles between us, I couldn’t believe that Espartero would waste his time searching for the girl in his bed. I tried not to remember his towering pride, which might be enough to prompt such a thing. Men such as he hate to be outwitted—and by a mere woman. Perhaps if he knew now that I had been with Diego, he could satisfy himself that my grief would be enough of a revenge. Matilde did not have the same optimism in our escape; she was very Spanish in this, full of melancholy and deep, deep woe.
“If Manuel isn’t in the world,” she mourned, folded up on her side, cloak tucked around, with little Matilde against the hollow of her belly, “even if he no longer loved me . . . just to know he was there, to aspire to his approval . . . I have nothing to live for.”
“Don’t say that! You have Matilde.” I was fiercer than I’d meant to be, hearing her speak like that.
She said nothing else, and I regretted my words. We all mourn in our own way. And who was I to say anything; I who had a lost child, and now a lost darling, a murdered love. I, who could keep nobody safe. I lay awake a long time, remembering Diego’s acrobatic lovemaking, his decadent mustache and virtuoso fingers. A dark, dreadful night.
When we rose at dawn, we had an unpleasant and mysterious surprise. Conquistador was circling fretfully in the stall; Lindo looked over with what appeared to be reproach. “What is it?” I said, stepping inside to stroke his nose and exchange breaths. And then I saw.
“Matilde, come here, quickly.”
She turned from what she was doing and joined me. We looked at each other, stunned. The bottom half of Lindo’s mane had been sheared roughly. Some of it now stood up straight, from halfway down the neck to the withers.
“How could—?” I was stroking the horse’s neck, trying to reassure myself. “If someone came in here—? Wouldn’t they have whinnied, or—?”
“Dios santo,” Matilde prayed, crossing herself.
We saddled up as quickly as possible and hurried away, only stopping to feed and water the horses once we’d put an hour or two between us and the barn.
“If Espartero’s men are following—”
“Hush,” Matilde told me. “Don’t speak of it, you’ll bring us bad luck.”
I thought this was palpably silly, but I bit my tongue.
“Tonight we must seek out company,” she continued. “We’ll stop before dark, as we see shelter. There is more safety in numbers.”
Who on earth would be travelling at our pace, I wondered, but then tried to relax and put myself in her hands. After all, this was why I was with her. She knew the country. She was once again my guide, and if need be I knew she’d suggest that we leave the main road and gallop up into the hills. This I dreaded, however, because of my fear of the northerners, the bandoleros. We weren’t in the north yet, but getting close. Our goal was to be past the Castilian border by nightfall.
We rode like a gale the entire day. The horses were still up for it, the road flat and well maintained, certainly until we began to see the hills of the Serrania de Cuenca beginning to rear up and away on our right-hand side. Late in the afternoon, as we passed through a town on an elevated height of land, I thought I wouldn’t be able to stay upright a moment longer, but somehow we went on, back down to the plains, now searching for companions to share the coming darkness. Matilde’s plan made me very nervous.
“How am I supposed to maintain my disguise?” I asked. “They’ll know, won’t they, and then when the military follow, asking questions, we’ll be remembered.”
“We’ll tell them. We’ll pay them to keep quiet.”
Oh brilliant, I thought. First of all, I needed Diego’s money to stretch as far as possible, and at this rate Matilde would run through it all before I even reached France! Secondly, who were these so-called companions going to be that they should be trusted with our secret? More than likely they’d be a group of men—with two young women, strangers at that? It would mean trouble.
Exhausted, we came into and passed through another small town, where the road branched. We kept to the northern road. Zaragoza, a big city into which we could vanish for a day or two to rest the horses, was no more than a two-day ride. The provincial border being only a few miles farther, we pressed on.
“Stop,” she called, for I’d been galloping ahead, fretting and stewing, and hadn’t noticed a purposeful group moving off to the left, on the plain, surrounded by sheep. She’d found our companions: three shepherds with a converged flock, heading at a leisurely pace for their spring upland fields in the Sierra Ministra. They eyed us suspiciously, but the youngest quickly seemed interested in sharing our company. We dismounted and began our negotiations; these men were the sort who spent months at a time saying very little, so Matilde was having some trouble making herself understood. Their dialect was thick, but she smiled winningly and held out the baby for admiration, and as explanation. Their leader was a dark-faced greybeard who kept gesturing towards me with a frown, shaking his head. Finally, Matilde whispered, “Don’t flinch,” just as the old man reached across, touched my breast, and gave it a quick squeeze as if testing an orange. His face underwent a transformation. Suddenly everything seemed to be possible, everyone (except me) gave a laugh of delight and understanding, and Matilde told me, “We’re safe for tonight. They’ll let us stay.” I was not very sanguine about the idea of bedding down near this ripe-smelling old billy goat—God save me, another Espartero with a fixation on breasts? But I was wrong; the men were very sweet and gentle. They had only wished to be sure that what Matilde had told them was the truth: that we were women on the run from a bad man and we needed both their protection and their silence. These they promised to give, and Matilde made me sweeten it with a handful of reales.
We walked along together for perhaps another mile until we reached a shepherd’s hut. The men whistled at their dogs, which ran around the flocks, herding and barking, until the sheep seemed to understand that this was a stopping point and they all lay down. We five humans shared what food we had, the horses ate oats, and before long we were all rolled up in our cloaks or blankets, hobbled and shifting from hoof to hoof, or panting on the ground in a heap of fleece—succumbing, in our various ways, to sleep. It was incredibly dark and silent there on the plain, even though there were many of us, breathing, resting. I lay awake a long time, and then finally weariness overtook me.
In the middle of the night, I awoke suddenly to hear a dog barking and to smell smoke. I sat up, instinctively crying, “¡Fuego!” and then I could see it, a flame licking at a corner of the roof of the hut. The shepherds leapt to their feet, and in what seemed to be no time at all the youngest had clambered up the outside wall to the thatch, beaten at the flam
es, and then smothered them with his blanket while the others beat out stray sparks that flared and fizzled along the ground. The dogs were snapping at the heels of the sheep which were rushing about in a panic. By the time this commotion had calmed down, I could see quite well by the light of the three-quarter moon, and what I saw filled me with terror. Perhaps a hundred feet away, a figure was mounted on a horse—and as I realized what was happening, it dug its heels into the animal’s side. The horse reared, neighing and pawing the air, then tore off into the darkness.
I rushed after it, scattering sheep. Still hobbled, another horse’s shadowy shape was nearby, snorting quietly. It was Lindo. Conquistador was gone, stolen out from under us. A horse thief, in the middle of nowhere, in February? Or an ominous shadow I suddenly suspected had been following us from Madrid—the one Matilde didn’t wish me to speak about, in case of bad luck.
Well, bad luck was certainly what we were experiencing now, and everyone knows that bad luck spawns itself. In the morning, the shepherds wished us good speed, but it was clear they did not welcome any more of our company. As we saddled Lindo, as I swung up and took the baby, as Matilde swung up behind and settled the little one in her sling—during all these preparations I could see the men surreptitiously crossing themselves.
My pistols were loaded with black powder, the necessary caps for firing in the usual place, ready at a moment’s notice to be placed in the firing chamber. For security, I’d been using the saddlebag as my pillow, and we were not yet short of money. But we needed provisions, and we needed a plan. Lindo was now carrying double the weight; we couldn’t go as quickly. And the dark figure, the pursuer, now had a fleet, edgy stallion to ride. Lindo knew Conquistador, and would likely welcome his reappearance rather than warn us at his approach. Watch for friendly whickering or pointing and swiveling of ears, I told myself. If I was aware, Lindo would still alert me—and this time, I had the pistols in my belt and vowed I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot first and ask later.
“Come on, sweetheart,” I whispered into the gelding’s hairy ear, “carry us bravely.”
And he did. Oh, that horse, that calm and lovely animal. With his steady, mile-eating canter, the morning and then the afternoon wore away. He kept it up, but I could tell he was tiring. The breath came snorting through his nostrils now, his sides were lathered. For his sake I wanted to stop. For all of us, I didn’t dare.
What was most unnerving of all on this day was Matilde’s dispirited silence.
“Perhaps we’re safe now,” I told her at one of our longer stops. I watched Lindo eating oats from the ground, velvet lips seeking and finding the grains, large jaw flexing with each hungry chew. “Perhaps whoever it was really was a thief, following because he could see that Conquistador’s such a fine horse. And now he has what he wanted, he’ll leave us alone.” Did I believe it? I can’t remember. Nothing seemed like a comfortable answer: If it were true, the horse would be sold, and then who would use and abuse Diego’s darling? If not, why would someone, anyone, be following us in order to frighten but not apprehend us? Pedro Coria was dead, for God’s sake, I’d seen it with my own eyes! I also realized this couldn’t be Espartero’s man—such a one would take me prisoner and haul me back or do away with me there and then, under orders, not play these wicked games. He wouldn’t steal the stallion, or hack off half of Lindo’s mane. This pursuer’s purpose was to instill fear. And then what?
Somehow the valiant Lindo had carried us as far as the borders of Aragon. In a village there I spent quite a few of Diego’s reales to stable the gelding and ensure he had a good feed and watering, as well as secure a room for Matilde and the baby, and get a hot meal for us in the village’s one hotel. “I’m sleeping with Lindo,” I told Matilde. “We can’t afford to lose him too.” Though extremely nervous—alone in the stall with the horse, other horses all around—I was glad to be there, and the night passed with no mishaps. Matilde and the baby also had a peaceful night, the rest she’d needed, a good wash in the basin (to which I also availed myself gratefully), and we enjoyed a breakfast of meat and eggs.
That morning, I could see that Lindo’s eyes were brighter and his step was jaunty again. I vowed not to overtax him, and in honour of that, spent another chunk of money purchasing a second horse. This one was not nearly the animal Conquistador was, but she would have to do: a slightly spavined pale brown mare, the only one on offer. We set out again.
“From Zaragoza,” I called, as Matilde cantered alongside on the mare, “we go east to Lérida, then towards Barcelona? How many more days?”
“Four or five at least, maybe a week. Once we turn north, in Catalonia, it is mountainous, slower.”
“Absurd! Why don’t you have any good roads in this country?” I retorted, with heat. In my fear and longing to be safe in England, Spain seemed to me now so backwards and barbarous. I tried not to think ahead too much, as it all seemed so impossibly slow. I still believed I’d be able to talk Matilde into guiding me over the Pyrenees to France, where I’d take the fastest coach to Paris, do my business with Grimaldi, and flee home to London. By then I’d decided I would have to leave the horses with her. Lindo, darling; how could I part with him? I’d have to face it somehow. And I thought that was the worst thing I would still have to face.
When we stopped at midday, Matilde was surprisingly loquacious. I think now she’d been silent in mourning; suddenly it all poured forth. With the infant at her breast, stroking dark hair away from the child’s starry eyes, she told me, “She could be Manuel’s, or she could be Diego’s. Who do you think she resembles?” Gathering my wits, I was about to make some kind of reply, but she didn’t need one. “I loved Manuel with my whole heart, and when he would not accept me any longer, because I am not of good blood, because I am a peasant, I was shattered but still his. All of me.” That man needed a good kick up the backside, I thought, for his supercilious ways—but then of course I remembered, and felt ashamed. “I hope you do not hate me,” Matilde continued, with a shy sideways glance at me, “because I also was bedded by Diego.” Quaint way to put it. “I was very happy that night, just one night. He could make you feel so beautiful.”
Oh, yes.
I can’t bear this, can’t bear remembering. But it’s part of the whole and I cannot stop now. But swift, swift and fast, it’s the only way.
We rode on until the early afternoon, when the mare suddenly went lame. We’d reached a town called de Doña something, a good twenty miles or so short of Zaragoza. I cursed and swore, but there was no help for it. The horse would have to rest, have her hoof looked at by a farrier. We found one; he promised to treat it and stable her overnight, then take another look in the morning. Would I have to leave her where she was and buy another? I counted the cash that was left. How would I ever keep enough to pay my fare home? When would I escape this diabolical nightmare of fleeing?
“No!” I shouted at Matilde when she suggested another hotel was the best idea. “We haven’t the money!” In a temper, I led Lindo ahead, searching for a deserted outbuilding or somewhere to shelter from the rain that had started and seemed likely to continue. I was cold and miserable, just as she was, but I didn’t know what else to do. I will not be stuck in some Spanish hellhole in the middle of nowhere, I told myself, seething. I will not run quivering at every noise and shadow. This time, I’ll have my pistol in hand and I’ll shoot to kill.
There was a small barn beside an abandoned tiny farmhouse. It was perfect: There was a little haymow above, with dry hay from several seasons ago. There was hay on the stone floor, enough to sleep on. A stall for Lindo.
“Tomorrow,” I told Matilde, “once we get to Zaragoza, I will be calm. It’s a city; I understand cities.” I was loading black powder into the chambers of the two little pistols, to be on the safe side. One I kept with me, the other was placed back in the book and into the leather bag.
“And money? Cities cost more money.”
I waved this aside. “Tomorrow. It will seem easier in the morn
ing.”
The sound of the rain eventually lulled me to sleep, and I must have been exhausted and more demoralized, too, than I’d realized. At one point, in the middle of the night, I woke with a start and called, “Matilde? Is that you?” There was no answer, but I reached to where she lay sleeping, two feet away, and touched her hand. Lindo snorted and shifted his weight. I relaxed again, still clutching my pistol, and fell asleep.
Dawn came. A beam of weak sunlight found its way between two boards, touching my cheek and then my eyelid. Light woke me. I turned my head and saw the most terrible thing I have ever seen.
Matilde lay shrouded in blood. There wasn’t a pool of it because it had seeped away into the hay, but it was all around her—and me. A huge pucker of skin marred her throat—unnatural, hideous—which I suddenly recognized as a violent knife slash, from ear to ear, nearly taking her head off. A rush of vomit came up from my stomach and out, but turning my eyes away from the very dead woman, I saw something worse. The baby, Matilde, pale and white and equally dead. Serenely smothered. Splashed with her mother’s gore.
Lindo’s head came up and over the side of the stall. His eyes were wide; I could see their whites. He was frightened, could smell the blood. “God,” I moaned and tried to stand. And then a whoosh, a black shape out of the corner of my eye, and down from the haymow flew the ungodly, the hell figure, the shadow. All in black, landing on its feet. Father Miguel de la Vega, of course.
The man was mad. This much was certain, where everything else was in flux. Before I could move or scream or anything else, he had twisted my hands behind my back and tied them painfully together. Then he scooped up my pistol, lying in the straw where I’d dropped it to vomit. Why had he saved me for the end, why had he waited for my eyes to open? Meeting his fearsome gaze, I understood: He needed a witness to sate his corruption. To my shame, I fell down again, knees shaking with terror, into the hay that was saturated with Matilde’s cold and congealing blood. I prayed for a speedy death—I could foresee nothing else at the end of this minute, or hour, or day.
