‘Rye,’ she began, ‘tell me about Spain.’
Spain . . . For a treacherous moment he thought of Spain, land of a lost love. His Spain was not the haughty iron-fisted Spain where a yellow-haired king in plain black velvet had worked himself to death in a cell-like office in the Escorial’s vast palace monastery - and along the way suffered defeat by England and the destruction of his vast Armada; nor was it the corrupt misgoverned Spain of Philip’s successor, the old-before-his-time Charles II. It was a Spain such as he had first seen it, divorced from politics, a pleasant land of wheat and cattle - and fighting bulls. There in the province of Leon a golden city had waited for him - Salamanca, its old stone buildings mellow in the golden sunlight that struck silver from the Tormes River flowing by. Salamanca with its cork oaks and its storks’ nests and its magnificent private houses ... And in one of those courtyard houses at the edge of storied Salamanca he had thought for a time to live always - with the fifteen-year-old girl who had won his heart.
‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that it is not about Spain you wish to hear.’
You are right, she thought. It is about the woman I wish to hear! But when she spoke, her voice was hesitant. ‘You told Aunt Pet you had been married before. Was that true?’
She was lying naked beside him as she spoke, and moonlight streamed in upon her gleaming body through the bank of stern windows of the great cabin. The night was quiet; there was no sound save the creaking of the great ship as it rode the water. Beside her Rye lay on his back with one long arm stretched across her slight body caressing the rounded curve of her hip, his fingers straying occasionally to the whiteness of her inner thigh.
‘Yes,’ he said, his dark head turning towards her. ‘It is true, Carolina.’
Her voice was troubled. ‘Why did you not tell me? Why did you let me find it out that way?’
‘It was so long ago, I never thought it would trouble us,’ he told her moodily. But there was another reason as well. Even now it was hard for him to speak of her without remembering the radiance of her glowing dark eyes, the scented midnight of her hair, the way she had sighed when first he had kissed her in an arcaded patio redolent of flowers . . . For years her memory had been the shrine at which he worshipped, her purity the standard by which he measured other women.
Now he gave the girl beside him a restless look. ‘Old wounds are best forgotten, Carolina.’
Old wounds . . . Lying there in the moonlight, Carolina felt a shadow of something gossamer pass over her naked form, like a warning. Perhaps she should not ask - but she could not help it.
‘Tell me about her, Rye,’ she said in a low voice.
He frowned and ran restless fingers through his dark hair. She was the lady of his heart now, this woman of starlight beside him. She deserved the truth from him - and the truth she would have, since she desired it.
He folded his long arms behind his head, lying naked and straight beside her, a lean handsome animal, a vigorous man in his prime. ‘Very well, Carolina, I will tell you. What do you wish to know?’
‘Everything.’
He sighed. ‘Where shall I start?’
‘At the beginning,’ she said, and hoped she was not opening a Pandora’s box that would unloose troubles upon her cloudless world.
‘At the beginning . . .’ he repeated thoughtfully. And now, for this bride of his heart, he relived the nightmare once again. ‘My uncle trained me in navigation and the ways of the sea,’ he told her. ‘When I was twenty I sailed with him on a merchant voyage. There was a great storm and we sighted a Spanish galleon - going down. Nothing could save her.’ Like a bird with broken wings, disappearing beneath the waves. ‘We saw a man clinging to a spar. We tried but we could not reach him and he was too exhausted even to catch the rope we tossed him. I leapt overboard with a rope lashed around me and managed to get an arm around his body and we were both dragged aboard.’ It had been a foolhardly venture because their own vessel was about to be swamped by the pounding seas, and the rope - a fragile lifeline at best in such a tempest - could have snapped at any time. ‘He was an old man and frail,’ he said, excusing his foolhardiness.
Her heart warmed to him as he spoke. How characteristic of him, to take such a risk! ‘So you saved his life?’ she asked softly.
‘Yes, and Don Ignacio Saavedra was very grateful. He had been a passenger on the ill-fated galleon and indeed had expected to die like the rest - for he was the ship’s only survivor. He spoke English passably well and he asked me if I would come home with him to Spain. He said he had no son of his own and that he would be honoured if I would become his son. I was young, reckless, of an adventurous turn of mind. I was hot to see Spain. My uncle pointed out that I was an Englishman, a heretic as far as Don Ignacio’s country and his church were concerned. Don Ignacio shrugged that off. He said that in six months’ time he would have me speaking good Castilian - for he was from Castile although he had married an heiress in Leon, and now that his wife was dead he still resided in her old family home in Salamanca. He said he would pass me off as a long-lost distant relative and I was to pretend a throat injury until I had mastered the language - he would tutor me in private. For himself he was not very devout although his family back in Castile had been. Indeed, his only brother had once considered studying for the priesthood. He said he would teach me the ways of the church so that I could pass for what I was not. At twenty, such an offer was too tempting to resist . . .’
Something dreamy in his tone told her how he must have felt at twenty, flying into the face of danger, visiting worlds undreamed of in his native England . . . The winds of other lands had called to him - perhaps, she thought fearfully, were calling to him now.
‘But your uncle?’ she protested. ‘Did he not object?’
‘He knew I was but a younger son - the third of my father’s four sons, and thus unlikely to inherit. He told me that Don Ignacio was a rich man and that this was a great opportunity for me if I could adapt to the ways of an alien land.’
And so, when they chanced upon a Portuguese fishing vessel near the Azores, his uncle had set him and Don Ignacio aboard and the fishermen had been persuaded to sail them to La Coruna. From there they had made their way on horseback to the ancient city of Salamanca on the right bank of the Tormes - beautiful Salamanca, ravaged by so many invaders throughout the centuries, where Hannibal’s feet had trod and later the Roman legions, the Goths, the Moors.
And there in the sunny courtyard of Don Ignacio’s villa on the outskirts of Salamanca, the young Englishman had met Don Ignacio’s daughter Rosalia. She had been fifteen then, untried, beautiful - they had fallen in love. Carolina could almost see Rosalia in her highbacked Spanish comb, languidly waving her fan in the shadow of the cork oaks. There was a richness in Rye’s voice when he spoke of her that made Carolina wince inwardly. She was wonderful, that richness said.
‘You were - lovers then?’ Carolina heard herself ask - and was ashamed at the catch in her voice.
He shook his head. ‘Spanish customs are very strict. A stroll in the courtyard - her duenna always present ... a serenade beneath her balcony at dusk . . . through the iron grillwork she tosses me a rose . . .’ And a look from her dark eyes more glorious than any sunset. . . His heart remembered the whispered vows of young lovers as a sleepy duenna dozed in the sunlight by a tinkling fountain.
It all sounded so very romantic, it was painful for Carolina to hear. ‘And so you were married?’ she murmured.
‘In Holy Mother Church,’ he said ironically. ‘I, a sometime Englishman and a heretic, took solemn vows under a false name, for Don Ignacio had christened me “Diego”, the name he would have given to a son of his own. I chose my own last name. I chose “Diego Viajar” - Diego the Traveller.’
‘But Don Ignacio could have had other sons,’ she objected, for this recital was becoming painful to her.
‘No, his young wife had died in childbirth. He mourned her - and was still mourning her. Even though he had been ur
ged to do so, he had refused to remarry. The estate in Salamanca would go to Rosalia,’ he added absently.
Not to Diego then . . . Rye had worn so many identities - English, Irish, and now, she had just learned, Spanish. She was hanging on to his words, almost afraid to hear what was coming next.
‘Don Ignacio had a brother - Carlos,’ he said abruptly. ‘Carlos had left Castile some years earlier and had made his home with Don Ignacio in Salamanca, but Don Carlos had influence at Court and had been sent out to Peru two years before. He had left behind him, as souvenirs of his stay at Salamanca, a mistress named Conchita no older than Rosalia - indeed Conchita must have been a mere child when Don Carlos first bedded her - and several illegitimate children got on various serving wenches. Don Ignacio, with his kind heart, was caring for them all, even old Juana, Conchita’s mother, who had been mute since birth. Don Carlos was a few years younger than Don Ignacio and in better health; he had expected when Don Ignacio died to become Rosalia’s guardian and gain control of her fortune. Someone must have written to him in Peru about me for he returned post haste, but he was too late - he rode up covered with dust just as Rosalia and I were coming out of the cathedral into the sunlight - man and wife.’
For a moment in her mind Carolina saw the scene as he must have seen it then: the glare of the sun on the red tile roofs and white-walled buildings of the town, the gloom of the high-vaulted ceiling of the great Romanesque cathedral they had just left. She imagined Don Carlos, a richly dressed Spanish grandee, travel-stained and weary, galloping into town on a lathered horse and coming to an abrupt halt before the twelfth-century cathedral. Saw his chagrin as he viewed a younger Rye - Don Diego Viajar, Diego the Traveller - stride out of the old church beside Don Ignacio’s daughter, the white lace of her mantilla spilling down from a high-backed Spanish comb over her dark hair ... It was a beautiful and a painful picture.
‘Did Rosalia know you were an Englishman and a heretic?’ wondered Carolina - for she had heard such things meant much to Spanish girls.
Rye frowned. ‘No. Her father had asked me not to tell her. He said it would only worry her, that she was a woman and should not be troubled with such matters. He said that I was Diego now and I should remain Diego. I did not like deceiving her but it was his wish and I honoured it.’
So Rosalia had not known. She had gone into marriage believing her Diego to be one of her own - just as she had been about to enter into wedlock with him at Level Green without knowing there had been a wife before her. And Rosalia somehow had ended in tragedy. Carolina told herself she would sort all that out later.
Rye’s next words rocked her.
‘I never knew if Don Ignacio was poisoned or not,’ he murmured. ‘But he had a violent seizure at our wedding feast and died almost immediately. When I took Rosalia weeping from his bedside, we found ourselves in an empty house - empty save for Don Carlos and those who had followed behind him. Don Carlos had driven away the servants. That left him in full charge . . .’ Rye’s face in the moonlight seemed carved in granite. There were terrible memories flickering in his grey eyes. ‘He had brought his men with him. They seized me and whisked me away to a wine cellar where they entertained themselves by recounting to me all the delights of the Inquisition which I would soon enjoy.’
The tortures of the Inquisition were well-known - and gruesome.
‘And you never saw Rosalia again?’ Carolina whispered.
‘Oh, yes, I saw her again. The following evening they got me up out of the wine cellar and took me to a room that opened on to the courtyard and tied my wrists to the rusty iron grating with strong leather thongs so that I could view the dusky courtyard - so that indeed I could not turn away from it. “Now, Englishman,” said Don Carlos - I do not know how he had learnt I was English; Don Ignacio must have told him in confidence just before the wedding feast when they were closeted together, believing the information was safe with him - “Now you will see what happens to those who marry heretics like yourself - and afterwards I will deal with you!" He waved his arm and across the courtyard I saw Rosalia brought out of the house by two of his men. She was still wearing her white wedding gown, still shrouded in the heavy white lace mantilla she had worn in the cathedral. I called to her but she did not answer. I think they must have gagged her for I could hear her moan but not her voice.’ He fell silent, remembering.
‘What - what happened?’ quavered Carolina, for she saw beads of sweat on Rye’s forehead now and realized that his breathing had changed.
‘Don Carlos took out his sword,’ said Rye. ‘And he turned to me with a laugh. Then he strode across the courtyard and thrust the naked blade through her body.’ The anguish in his voice told better than words the way the red blood had run down that chaste white gown, the way that proud dark head beneath the enveloping white mantilla had fallen forward as a girl who had never known a wedding night collapsed upon the stones of a courtyard in Salamanca far away.
‘No!’ The word was wrenched from Carolina. How could I have asked him to remember this? she was thinking.
She did not have to ask him what happened then. Rye told her.
‘I must have gone mad,’ he said bitterly. ‘I remember cursing him from that empty room where I was shackled - for the guards had gone away and left me. I remember Don Carlos swaggered towards me carrying his bloody sword.’ His face seemed carved in stone as he felt again his grief and rage at the sight of that slight crumpled figure, lying so still, a mound of white across the courtyard in the shadows of the cork oak, but his voice strengthened as through him surged the memory of the fiery need for vengeance that had possessed him at that moment. ‘I remember his face and his white teeth as he stood before me laughing . . .’
Carolina shuddered.
‘And then - the grillwork was rusted and old, the mortar crumbling for Don Ignacio was never one for repairs - I wrenched the grillwork loose and slammed it into his face. I remember his look of surprise when he fell - and I was tumbling through the window upon him, beating him to death with that iron grille to which I was still shackled.’
‘Did you - kill him?’ she whipered.
A terrible smile lit his dark countenance. ‘I did,’ he said softly. ‘I killed Don Carlos before his men could reach me. I remember hearing a scream. Then one of them struck me from behind and I remember nothing more until I woke, covered with my own blood, at the bottom of a cart with a load of straw on top of me.’
‘Who had saved you?’ she wondered, awed.
‘Old Juana had come to my rescue. She could not tell me how, for she was mute and she could not write, but she was leading the donkey that pulled the cart, and when I peered out at her she waved to me to stay hidden. Juana tended my wounds as tenderly as if I had been her own, and she took me in this manner all the way to La Coruna . . .’
‘Where you made your escape?’ she breathed.
He shook his dark head soberly. ‘I was not yet to escape that cursed land. Several prisoners had escaped from the jail the day we arrived in La Coruna and when we reached the waterfront, the entire area was being systematically searched. We were caught in the open and there was no escape. I was hauled out of the cart, seized by a dozen men, the old woman was questioned. When she did not answer she was thought insolent and despite my cries that Juana was mute and could not answer, she was struck such a blow as sent her staggering backwards where she fell beneath the wheels of a passing wagon. I believe she did not suffer - the heavy wagon wheel passed over her head and crushed the life from her instantly.’
Carolina, caught up in his narrative, gave an involuntary moan.
‘The authorities assumed I was in league with the escaped prisoners since I had been found hiding in the cart. And since their crime had been heresy, I was promptly hauled before the Inquisition - ’
‘Where they discovered you were English?’ she guessed.
‘That they never discovered. I staunchly maintained I was a Castilian vagabond and had been merely sleeping in the cart and
been wakened by the sounds of the soldiery. Naturally I was not believed. There was some talk that I might be an emissary of the Devil himself.’ He gave a short mirthless laugh that chilled her. ‘I was sentenced to death by burning at the next auto-da-fé -and would have gone to my death in flames had not Spain needed strong backs to row her galleys even more than she needed human torches to subdue the multitudes who were being ground down by the price of bread even as gold and silver poured in from Spain’s colonial empire. My back was broader than most, my sinews commanded attention - so my sentence was regretfully commuted to life as a galley slave.’
A living death . . . she had heard it called that.
‘How did you escape them, Rye?’ she asked anxiously.
‘I didn’t - not then. I was chained to an oar of La Fuerza, one of the smaller galleons of the Spanish treasure flota sailing to Porto Bello to bring back the gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru. A great storm came upon us in the Caribbean and the ships became separated. La Fuerza was badly damaged, barely afloat and rudderless when we chanced upon two buccaneer vessels from Tortuga. They boarded us and the situation was wild, for La Fuerza was well manned and there was fighting all over the ship. In the confusion, we galley slaves were stealthily running the long chains through our leg irons so that we could free ourselves. I had just threaded that chain through my leg shackles and freed my legs when the fighting spilled over into the galleys. The chain was still in my hands. The captain of one of the buccaneer ships was being hard-pressed by two Spaniards and was about to be run through by a Spanish blade when I launched that chain at the pair of them and by a lucky stroke struck them both down. It was at that moment that a cheer rose from the deck above - the Spanish captain had surrendered his vessel. Captain Reynard - whose life I had saved - freed all the galley slaves, had our leg irons struck off, and when he learnt that I was a navigator, he put me in charge of bringing back their prize. La Fuerzo - if I could keep her afloat - and allowed me to select a crew from among the galley slaves.’
Windsong Page 20
