Once you had sat at a man’s table, broken bread with him, then lies were so much harder. There was something holy about breaking bread with someone, even though you might never acknowledge the fact. Damn Elspet, why did she have to come after him?
Chapter 29
Zachary walked quickly, his hand on his sword, looking over his shoulder in case Rodriguez or his men should appear from a side street, but Gabriel’s sketchy directions were enough to lead him straight to the Corral del Toro. He stood a moment outside, listening to the melancholy twang of a lute or cittern and a guttural wailing voice. The sound wavered, hung on the night air.
This must be the gitaneria, the gypsy area. He’d heard tell in Toledo of the flowing-haired gypsy girls, with their peacock dress and loose morals, and ability to rend the heart with song. He had not thought about women for so long that, despite Elspet Leviston, the thought of meeting a gypsy girl sent a frisson of excitement up his back.
The tavern itself was a dilapidated squat brick building backing on to a courtyard. Grass grew out of the tiles on the roof, and the central square was overhung with twisted vines casting strands of shadow from the moon overhead. Pulling in his sword and buckler, he went through the arch into a square courtyard where sconces smoked against the walls. Rickety tables and disintegrating rush stools filled the central area. The tables were illuminated by spouted earthenware lamps; each wick flickered with a thumb-sized flame.
Clearly this was not the sort of place Rodriguez would frequent, so he exhaled and made his way over to where he could see Gabriel’s bulky silhouette. He was leaning back against one of the wooden pillars that supported the wispy canopy of foliage. Zachary dragged out a stool next to him and Gabriel grinned, pushing the jug of ale and a cup towards him.
‘You came!’
‘I need a drink,’ Zachary said, pouring the ale. He could not get over it – Elspet Leviston was actually here in Spain, the thought of it unsettled him.
Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, but before their conversation even had a chance to get started a jangle of strings cut through the chatter, and an old man in a ragged waistcoat started to play. Poor old man, he was almost toothless; a shock of greying hair stood vertically from his forehead making his lined face appear even more swarthy.
‘What’s that he’s playing?’ Zachary asked.
‘ “Cuando yo me muera”,’ Gabriel whispered.
‘No, not the song, the instrument.’
‘Oh, guitarra morisca. They’re quite common among the gitanes in the taverns.’
Zachary had never seen anything like it, so small, yet the sound so penetrating. Nothing like the English lutes or citterns he was used to.
The old man dragged his fingernails over the strings in a series of crescendoing arcs, then sang, his instrument silent on his lap. He started with a long-drawn-out lamentation, followed by words that seemed to rake across the room, his face screwed up in anguish. Zachary’s stomach lurched and from then on he was mesmerized by this man’s voice as he sang of the irresistible attraction of love, its passion and terror, of the fear that you might lose your lover, or yourself into love’s madness:
. . . te pío un encargo,
que con las trenzas
de tu pelo negro
me marren las manos . . .
‘That with the braids of your black hair they tie up my hands.’ The words startled him. It was so naked, his ardour. In England such a ballad could never be sung – it would be all birds and trees and courtly euphemisms. Whilst the old man’s voice held sway, no one picked up a cup to drink, or moved to fill their pipe. His voice was a river, with rapids and whirlpools, rough water and slow curves. Zachary was absolutely in his thrall. The old man’s clawlike hands gestured to the open sky above as he sang his last crooning note, eyes closed.
He spat noisily into the spittoon and cackled, showing his toothless smile. The spell was broken. Loud applause and movement returned to the tavern, girls bustled over with more ale, tankards lifted once more. An itinerant seller in a gold-cloth turban and embroidered waistcoat appeared at their side and plied them with dried meat and fish. They bought meat which was tasty but salty and caused Zachary to down another cup of ale. Seville was so warm, his thirst was never-ending.
He scanned the women at the tables, the way men do. He nudged Gabriel as his curious glance was returned by two dark-haired women leaning on the bar. He looked over and the two women turned away and whispered to each other. One of them was shaking her head and frowning. The other, the taller one in vivid green, kept looking over and smiling.
‘Those two?’ Gabriel said.
‘Do you know them?’
‘I’ve seen the one in the green before. She’s nice, she works in the fruiteria. The other one’s a dancer, I’ve seen her dance, but never spoken to her. Shall we offer them a drink?’
‘Go on, then.’
Gabriel waved them over. Behind them an eagle-faced man fixed Gabriel with his eyes. ‘Their father, I’ll bet,’ Zachary whispered as the girl in green approached, reluctantly followed by the other.
‘I know,’ Gabriel said. ‘Don’t worry, we will be careful.’ As they reached the table he smiled and stood. ‘We would like to buy you a drink.’
‘We like to know the names of those we drink with,’ said the girl in the yellow shawl.
‘Gabriel Lopez and Zachary Deane at your service,’ Gabriel said.
Zachary stood too, to offer his seat.
‘Maria Nuñez,’ said the girl in green, sitting, ‘and this is my friend – ’
‘Luisa Ortega,’ said the other girl, pulling up another seat.
‘He’s English.’ Gabriel wagged his head in his direction. It sounded as if he was apologizing.
They fetched sweet Madeira for the ladies, but had barely begun a conversation when the thrum of the guitar started up again. Zachary was torn between wanting to listen and wanting to talk. But Luisa had already put her cup down.
‘My time,’ she announced, and pulled her shawl from her shoulders to tie it tightly around her hips. ‘Save my seat, Maria.’ She hoisted her flounced skirts out of the way of the tables and chairs as she made her way to the front.
In the lamplight her face was serious and gaunt. Her hair was wound in a heavy knot at the nape of her neck and fixed with a horn comb. She reminded Zachary of a bird, there was something light-boned and insubstantial about her. She waited a moment before beginning a few tentative steps, her arms stretched above her head, slender fingers forming pointed beaks. She stamped her sandalled feet in small staccato movements. Bells at her ankles gave a shimmering sound. Her back was long and straight, her skirts falling in a cascade of ruffles to reveal neat ankle bones and sun-browned feet. She was beautiful. Zachary let out his breath; he had been holding it without knowing.
She swayed, eyes closed, to the rhythm of the guitar, hands curling down to her waist and back to above her head. Tack, tack. Her feet stamped. The guitar continued its rhythmic pulse.
Mid-movement she sighed and dropped her arms. She turned crossly to the guitarist and gesticulated; he paused in his play as she bent to talk with him. She walked back to their table, untying the shawl from her waist and flinging it back around her shoulders.
‘Aren’t you going to dance after all?’ Gabriel asked.
‘No.’ She looked distressed. ‘No, I can’t dance tonight. I have no spirit for dancing.’
Maria reached over and pressed Luisa’s hand where it lay on the table. Luisa turned to Zachary, an accusing look in her eyes. ‘You are English?’
He started to say, ‘No, half-Spanish, but—’
She interrupted him. Her sloe eyes searched his. ‘A good Catholic, yes?’
He looked to Gabriel, who shook his head as if to warn him to keep quiet.
Luisa still looked at Zachary with an odd intensity. It frightened him, that look. Maria filled the awkward silence. ‘Luisa had bad news. Last week she had to move out of her house, and now she’s just heard
from her uncle that some of her friends in Valencia have been deported.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Gabriel spoke politely.
‘Don’t, Maria.’ Luisa frowned at her. ‘It’s none of their business. I just don’t feel like dancing, that’s all.’
‘What’s wrong? They should know. It’s no secret, is it?’ Maria said. ‘The authorities have always treated us like dung. And now a man at the bar has just told me what they are spending our fines and taxes on.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘Guess what? A new gaol in the Castle of San Jorge so they can keep more of us conversos under lock and key.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘Not only that, but the prison is to have a special chapel where we will receive instruction in the Catholic faith. They will force us to their God with torture.’
Luisa gave her a warning glance. ‘Leave it, Maria. It’s not his fault.’
Maria ignored her friend. She thrust out her chin as if to dare them to react. ‘If we comply and take instruction meekly then they might deign to let us out of their stinking gaol a little earlier. If not, there will be more taxes or more torture. More galley service.’
Zachary looked to Gabriel. He didn’t know what to say, he was unused to such outspokenness in women.
Behind Maria, her father was approaching; he must have sensed something was the matter. ‘Maria?’
She stood up. ‘You – Englishman, you want to know what life is like for us? Here, Papa.’ She took her father’s wrist and pushed his claw-like hands before Zachary’s eyes. ‘See these – see these broken fingers? Galley service. Three years of it, where they beat your knuckles with an iron rod if you do not row quickly enough. What a waste.’
‘Maria, enough.’ Her father pulled his hands away but she did not stop. Her sallow cheeks were tinged with pink as she leaned forward, palms planted on the table, eyes blazing. ‘Too many good men have hands like these. My father was a calligrapher. And he must spend three years inside the belly of a stinking ship. Now he can hardly lift a pen. And you – you are all the same. You expect Luisa to dance for your entertainment. To dance for nothing. Well, she won’t dance to please you or anyone else. Come on, Luisa.’
Maria untied her shawl and swathed it tightly over her nose and mouth in the Morisco way and pushed through the throng to the door. A man near the bar let out a whistle. She turned long enough to send him a barbed look, her dark eyes framed by her scarf. Her father granted them a small bow, a laconic smile on his lips.
‘She means no harm. Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said.
Maria paused at the door for her father, and then swept out.
‘What a firebrand,’ Zachary said to Gabriel behind his hand.
‘She’s that.’
Luisa jumped to defend her friend. ‘It’s true though. To the authorities we are nothing but one big open purse.’ She pressed her lips together in disgust. ‘Señor, how long have you been in Spain?’
Zachary confessed, ‘Just six weeks.’
She shook her head, and her gilded earrings tinkled. ‘Ha. Then you don’t know the half of it. In Valencia they have sent everyone of Moorish descent back to the Barbary Coast, but they dare not do it here. Trade would collapse without our fines. Besides, if they did that, who would make their sandals?’ She glanced scathingly down at Gabriel’s hempen footwear. Gabriel retracted his feet out of view under the stool. ‘Sandal makers and farm labourers. That’s all they think us fit for.’
Gabriel looked abashed. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘let me pour you some more wine.’
Luisa folded her slim arms across her chest but she did not leave.
Zachary was reminded of a wild animal. It felt like a privilege that she had appeared at their table. But he was on tenterhooks lest she should decide to run off. Finally, she took a few sips of wine and seemed to relax. By now the guitarist was playing a softer melody of rippling strings.
‘I didn’t mean to offend Maria. Shall I go after her?’ Gabriel asked.
‘No. She’ll soon calm down. And she’s with her father. She’s always been hot-tempered. She’ll get over it. It isn’t your fault.’
‘Zachary didn’t mean to rattle her like that, I’m sure. It’s just, I expect they know little of our country in England,’ Gabriel said as if apologizing for him, ‘and he’s not been here long, after all.’
‘I can see that.’ She smiled fleetingly at last. ‘He looks like a foreigner.’
Zachary was affronted, but did not react. He had been dazzled by her smile. ‘I thought she seemed nice, your friend Maria,’ he said to her, aware that this sounded a little stupid.
‘She needs to watch her tongue.’
There was a silence then before Luisa asked, ‘What are you doing here in Spain? Englishmen do not get much of a welcome unless they have money to spend.’
‘He has money to spend, right enough,’ Gabriel replied. ‘His uncle left him a legacy—’ Zachary frowned at him. He was not anxious that everyone should know his business. Gabriel fumbled to change the subject. ‘He is making a sword. I work at Guido de Vega’s swordsmith’s and Zachary is making a sword. A fine thing,’ he gabbled. ‘It’s almost finished already. That’s how we met each other. At first I thought he was a mad fool, a gentleman like him. I thought he’d never do it.’
‘A sword, you say? I’m sick of swords.’ She grimaced. ‘My father has just made us move to a fencing master’s house. Papa’s employed by the school of the sword. He teaches them geometry and rhetoric. Heaven only knows why that’s any use for fighting.’
‘And you say you live there now? That must be interesting.’
‘Papa used to go down to the rapier school a few evenings a week. Actually, they don’t pay him. It’s a scandal. I keep telling Maria, they should be paying, gentlemen like that. Heaven knows, they get enough out of us Moriscos already, with all the fines and taxes. But Papa won’t have it – he says he does it for the love of it. He gets on well with the fencing master. He’s the only one he can discuss philosophy with, he says.’ She shrugged and raised her eyes to the sky. ‘We had to leave our other place, so now he’s there all the time. Still, at least he’s happy.’
‘And you say it’s a school of fence?’
‘Yes. Near the Church of San Jacinto. But it’s only a few students. I don’t think Señor Alvarez’s method is very popular. They call it La Verdadera Destreza.’
The name took a moment to register. He leaned forward. ‘Here? In Triana?’ He could hardly contain his excitement.
‘Yes. But it’s not a big place, not like the government one run by Don Rodriguez in the Arenal. Why, do you know of it?’
‘I’ve been looking for it. Is there a man there, a man with white hair, but young, not an old man?’ He could not contain his excitement.
‘Señor Alvarez, yes.’
‘You’ll never believe this. I really have been searching for it. Here –’ he raked in his satchel and brought out a corked bottle of ink, a pen, and a scrap of paper. ‘Write down the address for me, won’t you?’
‘I can make you a map if you like.’
She scratched out the curving inky lines of the riverbank, the narrow passageways and fortress walls, and pointed with the goose nib where to go. Her fingers were long and slender, there was a fine down of dark hairs on her forearms. She pushed the paper towards him. The map was oddly familiar. A crack opened in time. Déjà vu, the French called it. A quirk of the moment that made him shake his head to rattle it free of a history that had not yet happened.
‘The sign of a spreadeagled man,’ Luisa said, pulling back the paper and drawing quickly. ‘You know it?’
Gabriel shook his head.
She had drawn a man spread out like a five-pointed star. Like in Vitruvius. Uncle Leviston had talked of him. It was an omen, it must be.
‘Will I need an introduction?’ he asked, folding the precious piece of paper and putting it in his bag. ‘I mean, would your father vouch for me? I can pay.’
She was waving her hand and laughing. ‘Fo
r that place? No. But be careful. Don’t waste your good money. If you are after proper training, the men say Don Rodriguez is the best.’
He did not answer; he knew enough of Rodriguez to know his methods were not for him.
Part Three
The Spirit that is principal in the Man
is the fundamental basis of all the Exercise of the Arms.
Carranza – Dialogues
Chapter 30
Luisa paused behind the sheet, her mouth full of split-wood pegs. She was hanging clothes on the line to dry before going to work, when a noise made her stand on tiptoes to look.
There he was, that pipsqueak Englishman, standing in the yard looking lost. He had found his way there, so her map must have been good enough for him to follow. She had never expected to see him though, thought it was all talk. And she wasn’t so sure she wanted to be associated with someone who had so clearly been in a fight. She took the pegs from her mouth and smoothed her hair. But Maria was very keen on his friend, the journeyman smith, though of course she pretended not to be. Maybe the English man wasn’t so bad after all.
She hurried over, the empty basket at her hip. ‘Buenos días,’ she said.
He replied in Spanish and smiled. His English accent was strong, but not unpleasant. He had arresting brown eyes which made her drop her gaze.
She told him the others were indoors, that they had quiet study for portions of the day, and other times they trained here in the yard – she pointed to the straw targets nailed up to the walls. He looked with polite interest, but the targets seemed pathetic, most of them tattered through use and homes to mice. As she talked, she noticed that his fingernails were bitten to the quick, and that he had very shapely calves. When she showed him the targets she did not tell him that she dreaded the mice would not be quick enough to move when the men started their target practice.
He listened, watching her closely, his head cocked to one side.
A Divided Inheritance Page 22
