But he came hurrying up as Pedro was helping Mrs. Brett into her carriage. ‘Mrs. Brett! Miss Brett! This terrible news has made us all forget our manners.’ His hand was reassuring on Juana’s as he helped her mount the steep carriage step.
She had entered from the far side so as not to inconvenience her grandmother and now was able to bend towards Gair and ask: ‘But Mr. Fox’s death: may it not change things?’
‘Miss Brett, nothing can change me!’ His hand touched her sprig of jasmine, wilting in his buttonhole; his tone was a lover’s; his look, for her alone, before he turned and left them, held a promise.
‘Insufferable!’ Pedro was leaning in at the other carriage window. ‘What are you thinking of, ma’am, to let that puppy dangle after Juana?’
Mrs. Brett had sunk with a sigh of exhaustion into her corner, but her eyes and voice were sharp as she answered. ‘I’ve never objected to the company you keep, Pedro. I hope I’m old enough to choose my own. It’s lonely for Juana at the castle. I don’t notice that you or your brother have put yourselves out to come and entertain her. As for Mr. Varlow, I’ve had some enquiries made. He is of perfectly good family, but penniless. Quite impossible, in fact, as a husband for Juana, but if he wants to make a fool of himself over her, it’s his own affair. I won’t have you interfering. Is that understood?’ She closed her eyes. ‘Tell the coachman to drive on.’
Chapter Ten
The Castle on the Rock had never seemed so dreary as on the day after Lord Strangford’s party. The weather had changed in the night, and Juana waked to a darkened room and the sound of rain lashing against the windows. She had forgotten how violent these autumn storms could be, swelling streams to torrents, turning paths to streams. No one would ride out from Lisbon today, or, very likely, for many days to come. If Gair Varlow should feel that his work here was ended with Fox’s death, and decide to sail with Lord St. Vincent, he might not even be able to come out and say goodbye.
Was she imagining things? His last words had certainly been reassuring enough. ‘Nothing can change me,’ he had said, miming the abject lover but intending her to understand that she could count on him, whatever happened. Doubtless he had meant it at the time. But, if he were suddenly to be summoned home? She was beyond illusions about him. He would obey orders.
She shivered and jumped out of bed, to feel the floor chilly under her bare feet. A pool of water lay by the window she had left open, and as she went to close it lightning tore the sky open, closely followed by its crack of thunder. Rain soaked her nightdress and the window struggled in her hands as she fought to pull it shut. Far below, the Atlantic had been lashed into a fury of white-caps. Surely Lord St. Vincent would never sail today?
Hurrying along the rain-swept cloister, she found Elvira already seated at the breakfast table. ‘ “Great nature weeps,”’ was her greeting. ‘ “Weep men and beasts therefore.” The whole ocean would not be tears enough for Mr. Fox.’ She poured coffee with a shaking hand. ‘I met him once. At the Duchess of Devonshire’s. He was a great man. The world is different this morning.’
‘Yes,’ Prospero had entered the room as she spoke. ‘It’s wet. You won’t get your ride today, Juana. What will you do with yourself?’
She had been wondering this herself, but put a cheerful face on it. ‘All kinds of things, uncle. I might begin by exploring the castle. Do you know there are whole bits of it I don’t in the least remember.’
‘And all of them full of rats and bats and cobwebs. I’d spare my pretty new dresses, if I were you. Come to me in the library instead. I need a secretary today. You write a better hand than mine, and I promised Lord Strangford I’d send him copies of several passages from Camoens where my reading differs from his. He said he would send his Mr. Varlow out for them – the one who made such sheep’s eyes at you yesterday, Juana. I didn’t think my boy Pedro liked it much.’
‘No?’ Nothing would induce her to discuss Gair – or Vasco either, with her uncle. She turned with relief as the door opened. ‘Good morning, Uncle Miguel.’
‘Bless you, my child.’ It was always hard to decide just how seriously Uncle Miguel expected his blessings to be taken.
‘Coffee, Miguel?’ asked Elvira, and then, in the same perfectly everyday tone:
‘ “Upon such sacrifices
The heavens themselves throw incense.”’
Prospero kept Juana busy most of the day, and in fact she was glad enough to abandon her half formulated plan of exploring the uninhabited parts of the castle. If there really were other secret entrances besides the one in her grandmother’s room, was she sure she wanted to find them?
When the failing light released her at last from Prospero’s dull verse, she found her aunt sitting in the Ladies’ Parlour, stitching away at her embroidery.
‘What are you making?’ Juana moved a branch of candles nearer.
‘Thank you.’ Elvira bit off her thread and held up the canvas so that Juana could see the exquisitely fine needlepoint. ‘You’re an observant child. I don’t often work on these. They’re a set of chair-covers.’ She laughed. ‘They were to be part of my trousseau. English flowers, you see. One on each. But I’d only got to the primrose when he changed his mind. I thought I’d never go on with them.’
‘I’m sorry. I had no idea …’
‘You thought I’d always been old and sad and a little mad? Why not? It’s hard for the young to believe in old age: merciful, really, that they can’t. But, Juana, I’m anxious about you. What are you going to do here, all alone? You can’t spend all your time roaming about the valley; nor working for your uncles either. Mother’s busy just keeping alive. Oh, she’ll use you, as she has the rest of us, but that’s all. I can’t help you. I’m – what you see. You must make a plan for yourself, child, if you don’t want to get like me.’
‘A plan?’
‘Yes. What do you want to be? No need to tell me—’ Had she seen Juana’s instinctive recoil? ‘Just think about it. Men learn how to be the kind of person they want. They go to school, have tutors … We have to teach ourselves. We make ourselves what we are.’ She looked up from her work, her eyes unusually bright. ‘I made myself “poor Elvira”. It’s an easy part … What’s yours to be? Remember, no one here is going to help you.’ They had been talking Portuguese, now she switched to English. ‘You might begin with that stammer. There’s something rather “poor Juana” about that, don’t you think? You could begin by saying: “I’ll do my best.” Quickly!’
‘I’ll d …’ she stuck. ‘It’s no use. I can’t.’
‘So you want to spend the rest of your life here in Portugal?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She was surprised at herself.
‘That’s what I thought. You’d better do some thinking too. If you want to go back to England, you must learn to speak properly. You’ll never do what you don’t try. Practise on me, any time you like. My English is so rusty, a little stammering will give me time. Anyway, who cares what a mad old spinster thinks?’
‘Talking English?’ Miguel had come in unnoticed, on slippered feet. His voice was disapproving.
‘Talking? Were we really talking? Did I speak, and did she answer? Shall I talk, and will she listen? No, no, Miguel.’ Elvira rolled up her embroidery and rose. ‘It’s quite impossible. I am silence, you know, and nobody heeds me. “Goodnight, ladies, goodnight sweet ladies …”’ She drifted from the room.
‘Poor creature. You don’t mind her too much, Juana?’
‘Of course not. But what’s wrong with speaking English?’
‘Has no one explained? We think it best, with things as they are, always to speak in a language that the servants can understand.’
‘In case they are spying on us? To make it easier? Uncle, that’s horrible.’
‘Life is horrible. Have you not understood that yet, child? I was hoping you might have. That your disability might have taught you something of the truth.’ He came closer, to stand over her. ‘Have you not thought, Juana,
that the answer for you lies in the service of God? Who knows but that He put the impediment into your speech to give you time to remember Him. Just think how happy you would be in a Silent Order.’
‘I? Uncle, are you mad?’ She felt as if, running in the dark, she had come to the edge of a cliff.
‘No, child, just sane with a greater wisdom than you are ready for. But foolish, too, in my generation. I had meant to wait longer before I spoke. Forget it for now, child, but remember when His time is ripe.’
‘If you mean ripe for my entering a nunnery, I can tell you this minute, uncle, it never will be.’
‘Never is a long day. Remember, Juana, that we are all dust before the breath of the Lord. Why should the dust rise up and say, “I will be thus,” or “I will not be so”?’
A little shiver ran down her spine. Why let him frighten her? She jumped to her feet: ‘I must get ready for supper.’
The storm blew itself out in the night and Juana woke to brilliant light and Maria’s eager voice at her door: ‘Have you seen them, senhora?’
‘Seen what?’
‘The English ships.’ She moved over to the seaward window. ‘Look! You can see them from here. They must have come out with the tide.’
‘They’re going!’ Juana joined her at the window and watched the six graceful line-of-battle ships beating up the coast, Hibernia unmistakable in the lead. ‘They’re really going.’ She had not realised what a sense of security those six ships had given her until now, when she saw them sailing away. So far, she could always change her mind, beg Gair Varlow to arrange a passage home for her. Not that she would, of course, but at least it had been possible. Now, they were gone, and she was alone here. And there was worse. Fox’s death might well mean a change of government in England. What more likely, if so, than that Gair Varlow would be recalled. He might be out there now, going home with St. Vincent.
Maria was looking at her anxiously. ‘What’s the matter, menina? Does it make you sad to see them go?’
‘A little. It’s nothing.’ She managed a laugh. ‘Iago would say a ghost had walked over my grave.’
‘Oh, that Iago! You mustn’t listen to him. He’s from the Alentejo, you know, and superstitious like all of them down there. If I listened to half the stories he tells, I’d never have a quiet moment in this castle. He thinks it’s a trysting place for the bruchas. They meet here at the full moon, he says, and Satan comes to them, out there on the cliff.’ She crossed herself. ‘It’s all nonsense, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Not nonsense, but the Sons of the Star. If only the full moon was safely past … All the time, as Juana lived her quiet life in the castle, a kind of metronome was ticking away at the back of her mind, numbering off the days to the full moon, when she must go down the winding stair alone. Not many more now.
Far out to sea, the Hibernia had changed course to round Cabo Roca. Soon she would be out of sight. Suppose Gair Varlow was on her. She would suppose no such thing. ‘I’m hungry, Maria! Fasten my dress for me?’
She escaped from breakfast as soon as she could and ran down to the stables to tell Iago to saddle Rosinante.
‘We can’t go down the valley today. The stream’s in flood this morning, and the paths not much better.’ No doubt he was glad of this excuse to keep her away from the Jaws of Death.
‘Yes, I thought it would be. We’ll ride, instead, a little way along the Sintra road. That’s on the ridge and should have drained off pretty well by now. We might even get a glimpse of the English ships.’ It made as good a pretext as any to cover her urgent need to get away from the castle, where, somehow, however lonely, she was never alone. Besides, the dark little wood on the Sintra road must be faced alone some time, and, Vasco was right, the sooner the better.
She rode slowly, deep in thought. Her dreams the night before had been disturbed by echoes of what Elvira had said to her. Waking, she had tried in vain to dismiss it as a madwoman’s ramblings. But there had been nothing mad about Elvira when she had spoken of her mother: ‘She’ll use you, as she has the rest of us.’ What, exactly, had she meant? Was she suggesting that old Mrs. Brett actually wanted her sons to live the lives of drones?
Yesterday, Juana had rejected this idea. Of course her grandmother was fond of her – was not just using her. Out here, today, with St. Vincent’s ships silhouetted against the sky, she admitted doubt. If her grandmother really cared about her, would she have withdrawn, as she had done since Lord Strangford’s party, and shut herself up in her rooms with Manuela and Estella, when the moon was almost full and she must know what this meant, in terror, for Juana?
The loneliness was the worst. If only there was someone she could discuss it with, someone to argue away her terror of going down that long dark stair alone. Someone? But who? If Vasco had stayed, would she have told him?
St. Vincent’s ships were dwindling towards the horizon now. In a few days, some of them might be in sight of England. And – I’m homesick, she thought, that’s really what’s the matter with me. Memories crowded in on her: coal fires, the clank of milking pails, the smell of an English stable. Most surprising of all, out here on this hot, fragrant hillside, she admitted to herself that she missed Daisy and Teresa. At least, they had been company.
In a minute, she would be in tears. She kicked Rosinante into her shambling trot, then pulled her up again with a sharp little stab of terror at sight of a single horseman emerging from the dark wood on the hill below her.
Iago had seen him too. ‘Let’s turn back, senhora. It might be one of them – the bandits.’ He was shaking with fright.
‘Don’t be silly, Iago.’ She was angry with him for echoing her own illogical terror. ‘They’d never dare in broad daylight like this. Besides—’ she hesitated, not liking to speak of that horrible, bloodstained package.
‘There were only four ears, senhora. I counted. And it was six men attacked you, Senhor de Mascarenhas said. The others may have come for vengeance. Let’s go back, quickly.’
‘Nonsense. Don’t you see he’s waving to us? It’s Senhor Varlow.’ She hoped he could not see that she was shivering with relief. ‘We’ll go to meet him; but keep close to me, Iago.’ After all, the proprieties thus observed, they could safely talk in English. If she stammered, Gair Varlow would just have to bear it. So: ‘Good morning,’ she began when he approached.
But, ‘Bom dia,’ Gair answered, his warning glance at Iago reminding her unpleasantly of what Uncle Miguel had said about speaking Portuguese so that the servants could understand.
She took the cue, just the same, and answered in Portuguese. ‘I was afraid you might have sailed with Lord St. Vincent.’ She was furious when he thanked her, doubtless for Iago’s benefit, in flowery terms for her concern. ‘I’ve been wishing I’d sailed with them.’ Saying it deliberately to shake him, she was delighted at how well she succeeded.
‘You want to go back? Already? Miss Brett, this is terrible news.’ Now he really meant it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m homesick. Isn’t it comic? I never thought I’d find myself missing England, but I do just the same. I was thinking, before we met, that I would ask my grandmother’s leave to return.’ Had she been? She was not sure.
‘Do you want to kill her?’ He was serious enough now.
‘Oh, I think she’d manage to survive.’ Poor man, he could not, with Iago riding a few paces behind them, refer to the Sons of the Star. She watched with wry satisfaction as he searched for an answer.
It seemed odd enough when it came. He swore, picturesquely, in Portuguese: ‘Corpo de deus I’ve dropped my riding glove. When I saw you, I expect. Here, you—’ He raised his voice to summon Iago, who had kept behind them, but comfortably within earshot. ‘There’s a testoon for you if you find my glove. I must have dropped it back there by the little wood. It’s the fellow of this one—’ He held out his left hand in its leather gauntlet. ‘My sister gave them to me,’ he added, as if in explanation, to Juana.
‘Oh, in that
case, you mustn’t lose it. Run quickly, Iago, and we’ll wait here for you.’
The offered bribe had been just right. Iago looked doubtful for a moment, then started for the wood. Gair plunged at once into a lover’s speech of self-congratulation on having her, at last, to himself, spun it out until Iago was well out of earshot, and then: ‘You aren’t serious, I hope?’
‘I’m not sure. You don’t know what it’s like here, for a woman. Even my aunt warned me, yesterday, of what I’d become if I stayed.’
‘I don’t remember that you were exactly happy in England.’ And then, forestalling her answer. ‘But, frankly, it’s not a question of your happiness. Nor even of your grandmother’s life or death. Though I think you should face it that a few more trips down that winding stair in the cold winter months will kill her. I don’t know how you will feel about having that on your conscience. That’s your affair. What concerns me is the problem of finding a substitute. It was not easy for Mrs. Brett to persuade the Sons of the Star to let you take her place. Even if I could find someone to take yours (which is doubtful) there’s still the problem of getting their permission. It’s a sore point with many of them, this dependence on a female. You must have gathered what they think of women.’
‘Yes. I didn’t much like it.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. Don’t you see? You think Portugal is no place for a woman. Just imagine what it would be like with the Sons of the Star in power. Women would not just be inferior, they’d be chattels.’
‘But do you seriously think there is a chance of their succeeding?’
‘A chance? There’s a strong likelihood. That was a well-designed plan they made at their last meeting. They were quite right, you know. Lord St. Vincent is an impatient old fire-eater. He had gone so far as to confide in Strangford that he was tempted to abduct Dom John if he wouldn’t listen to reason. It was madness, of course. It would have had the worst possible effect. But he meant it just the same. The coup the Sons of the Star planned, put into effect in the chaos after the court left, would in all probability have succeeded. You might be living, now, under their authority – their tyranny. Face facts, Miss Brett. If you propose to fail us, don’t flatter yourself that what you do doesn’t matter. It will probably be the most important action of your life. This is your chance to affect the course of history. Throw it away, if you must, but at least have no illusions about what you are doing. Oh – I don’t even know that I blame you. The whole thing’s been impossibly hard on you. I wish I could have explained to you in England. It would have been much better, I can see now, if you had been consulted before you were brought here. But, think a little: in the frame of mind you were in, when we first met, you would have agreed?’
The Winding Stair Page 14
