Spanish Serenade

by Jennifer Blake

  They rolled onward, mingling with the crowd. Pilar sat stiff and straight, expecting at any minute to be called back, or else to hear Baltasar and the others behind them challenged. It did not happen. They were inside the city walls; they had reached Cordoba.

  They moved along the street, past the walls of the ancient mosque that had been built by the Moorish ruler of Cordoba over a thousand years ago and turned into a cathedral some four and a half centuries later with the conquest of the Catholic king. Its majestic arches towered above them, solid and enduring and harmonious in their symmetry. Refugio and Pilar scarcely looked up. The baby howled without ceasing. Refugio, plodding along beside the cart, sent her a quick slanting look. His voice shaded with quiet amusement, he said, “I see you're not maternal.”

  “Being maternal has nothing to do with it,” she snapped. “The poor little thing knows something isn't right, and he wants his mother.”

  “No more than I want her to have him.”

  “You don't like children?” she asked pointedly.

  “I dote on the little treasures, but not when they are attracting attention.”

  “Bringing him was your choice,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, well, he adds a certain validity to my image as a lack-wit with a scolding wife, don't you think?”

  Pilar scowled at him. “I'm not your wife.”

  “Wonderful playacting!” he congratulated her. “The world can see you have a proper regard for your mate.”

  “I told you—”

  “So you did. And tell me this, why is it you have so little concern for propriety. Why did you refuse to be made the wife of this Carlos?”

  “I don't know what you mean,” Pilar said, jiggling the baby vigorously, but with no effect.

  “Most women in your place would be yelling for a priest and demanding the security of a man's name, any man's name.”

  She gave him a sharp look. “I have enough problems already.”

  “The purpose is to solve them, not make them, or at least to pretend that a ring has that power, that marriage is an estate to be longed for by a woman.”

  “It can also be a snare,” Pilar said, thinking of her mother.

  “Such heresy will see you hounded from the society of those who have made that bargain and have no choice except to celebrate it.”

  “You sound no more ready for marriage than I,” she told him.

  “It appears a blessed estate for those who love; I remember how it was with my mother and father, you see. It's only that love is rare.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice low. “Anyway, I'm not sure that a ring and a vow could restore me to respectability.”

  “Therefore you scorn them?”

  A reluctant smile touched her mouth. “I see. You are doubtless thinking of sour grapes and foxes.”

  “No, no,” he answered, “only honey and bees.”

  “What?” she asked, but he was looking behind them for signs of pursuit, and made no answer.

  They wound through the old town, past wrought-iron gates that revealed glimpses of green and secluded patios, under geranium-hung balconies and along streets planted on either side with the pointed and dark green shapes of ever- green cypresses. On a side street in the shadow of the Alcazar, the old palace where Ferdinand and Isabelle had seen Columbus off on his voyage to the Americas and where the Holy Inquisition was housed, they stopped. Across the way lay a narrow house made of stone with a tiled roof, projecting balconies railed with iron, and a heavy, blue-painted door. It was a comfortable house rather than an imposing one. It was also extremely quiet.

  Baltasar, with Enrique and Charro behind him, caught up with them. They all stood looking at the house. Pilar gathered up her skirts and prepared to get down from the cart. Refugio put out his hand and touched her arm.

  “Wait,” he said.

  Pilar hesitated. Refugio had discarded his dullness as if it were a piece of worn out clothing. His manner was alert, poised for instant action. His gaze, under the ridiculous conical hat, moved over the face of the house, searching every window and door, then traveled on to its neighbors'. A stray cat, ambling down the street, saw them and stopped. It hissed, bowing up its back, then fled.

  “Stay here,” Refugio said.

  He did not wait for a reply, but strode away, crossing the street and angling for an alleyway. He glanced both ways, then glided into the dim passage. Pilar waited only until he was out of sight, then she motioned toward the baby's mother, who had trailed up behind the goats, and handed her the baby. Jumping down from the two-wheeled vehicle, she followed Refugio. The house before her belonged to her aunt, her only real relative. Pilar was prepared to take all necessary precautions, but the endless delays had been maddening. There was no sign of either Don Esteban or the authorities, and she could not wait to see her father's sister a moment longer.

  There was a second alleyway leading off the first, one that meandered past the back of her aunt's house. Halfway along its length was a wooden gate set into a wall, a servant's entrance from all appearances. Pilar saw Refugio pause at the gate and push on it, saw it give under his hand to swing silently inward. He stood listening a long moment, then stepped through in a single swift movement before spinning instantly to one side.

  He was inside a patio, for through the open gate Pilar could see the branches of shrubs and a stretch of stone tiles.

  Somewhere a bird sang, a shrill, discordant sound at this season.

  She moved forward, easing through the patio gate. Inside, the garden had a dank, dispirited air. The fountain was still, so that the long reflecting pool that caught the overflow lay as dark and glassy as a steel mirror in the gray light of the overcast day. The patio was deserted.

  Pilar stood in the shadows, watching as Refugio crossed to the house and tried a back door. It was locked. He moved away, out of her sight, and there came the tinkle of breaking glass. She waited a moment longer, then followed in the direction he had taken. A long window set with small circles of stained glass stood swinging open. She crossed to it with quick footsteps and climbed over the sill, slipping inside.

  She was in some kind of reception room, one of impressive size and stultifying formality. Gilt and red velvet chairs lined the walls beneath dark and formal portraits. The light coming through the colored glass of the windows made blue and green stains on the stone floor. The air was chill and smelled of cold fires, cracked leather, and ancient dust.

  There was a stair hall through double doors, with a stairway winding upward into the shadows. Moving toward it, Pilar heard the faint creak of a step and thought that was the way Refugio had gone. She picked up her skirts, climbing after him.

  The body was around the first bend of the stairs. It was an elderly servant, or so it appeared from the rough cloth of his night shirt, perhaps her aunt's majordomo. He was icy cold and his eyes were wide and staring, while blood from a stab wound splotched his nightshirt. He had died at night, for in addition to the nightshirt as indicator, the candle he had been holding had gone rolling as he fell, scorching a lower stair tread before burning itself out.

  Pilar swayed a little as she hovered over the dead man. The apprehension inside her blossomed into horror mixed with dread, while something cold and hard closed around her heart. What had happened here? Where was her aunt?

  Hearing another soft footfall above her, she made the sign of the cross over the man, then stepped gingerly over the sprawled form. Moving with care, staying close to the wall, she mounted upward.

  The upper floor was a maze of sitting rooms and bedchambers opening into each other. Pilar could not tell which way Refugio had gone. She opened her mouth to call out to him, then closed it again, since to disturb the silence seemed wrong as well as unwise.

  She moved in and out of one suite and then another, coming finally to a set of doors that were larger and more ornately carved and fitted than the others. She penetrated an antechamber to reach a small salon dominated by a massive stove of Flanders ti
les, then passed through a doorway hung with sea-green portieres. Inside was a bedchamber holding a bed raised upon a dais. The bed had a gilded and painted headboard and posts topped by gently waving ostrich plumes.

  On the floor beside the dais lay a maid with a shawl over her nightgown and her gray hair trailing down her back. The maid, like the majordomo, had been stabbed.

  Pilar's aunt was propped in the great bed, sitting up against a pair of pillows with a bible across her lap. She wore on her head a beautiful nightcap of Alençon lace trimmed with pink ribbon. A red ribbon of blood circled her neck where her throat had been cut. Standing over her with his hand across her face was Refugio.

  Pilar gave a soft, gasping cry of shock.

  Refugio whirled. He swore vividly, fluently, and without repetition. In an instant he had sprung from the dais, striding down upon her. He wheeled her around with his hand grasping her upper arm, thrusting her from the room.

  Pilar caught the doorjamb, digging in her heels. “No, don't! I want to know. I have to know if she's—”

  “Alive? No, positively not. She's dead, and has been for at least ten hours, possibly longer. Can you help? No. I closed her eyes. It's all we can afford to do.”

  “You think Don Esteban did this?” she asked, her voice faint.

  “His hirelings, at a guess. Either that or else the fates are on his side. I prefer to think the first.”

  She shook her head, not in disbelief but in an attempt at negation. “How could he? How did he dare?”

  “How? Easily. It comes from thinking that his wishes, his needs, and his will are supreme. As for daring, why not? He has served so many with their death notices that it's far from being a novelty.”

  There was a corrosive edge to his voice that struck through her horror. “I'm sorry,” she said. “This must be a reminder for you.”

  His face there in the dim light of the shuttered room was shadowed with self-contempt. “It's a failure.”

  “Why? There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Oh, but there was, if I had taken thought. Instead, I ran prancing in circles around a chimera, yearning after an impossible consummation. I should be flayed, as a beginning.”

  “This was not of your arranging,” she said, her voice stark. “If I had not involved my aunt, she would be alive.”

  He watched her for long seconds with a suspended look in his eyes. “Would you rob me of my self-immolation, or only share it? Either way may not be a kindness; I need something to drive me.”

  “I thought you had hatred enough for that.”

  His facial muscles did not change, yet his expression became merely polite. “Yes,” he said, “though there are inducements of equal value and greater pleasure. To discuss them could be stimulating, but not just now. Deathbeds require more circumspection, as a general rule, and this one more than most.”

  The hint was delicate, but she took it. “I know you cannot be found here, but there are things that I should do. Someone must inform the police, send for a priest, arrange for the death notices and the vestments, so many things.”

  “For you to be found here with me could also have grim consequences.”

  “Then you must leave me now, before someone comes. I — I'll be all right, really I will.”

  “What makes you think so? What if the person who comes is the assassin? Or your stepfather?”

  “I can't just leave,” she protested with a glance back toward the silent bed.

  “You can't stay. Do you really think that Don Esteban, having gone this far, will let you live? Linger here, and there will be another body with knife wounds by morning.”

  “It isn't your responsibility. I'm sure the authorities—”

  “The authorities are conscientious, those not too intimately acquainted with Don Esteban, but they could not protect your aunt.”

  “But I can't just go with you back into the mountains!”

  “Why not? Your aunt must have had other relatives, other friends who will see that the necessary things are done. You can't afford to let the guilt you feel become a trap.”

  “It isn't just that. What will I do if I go with you? What will become of me?”

  “Isn't it too late for such worries? Whatever contamination you are going to suffer has been done already.”

  “I didn't mean it like that,” she said, her eyes dark with worry. “Regardless, you must see how impossible—”

  The words were cut off as he gestured for silence with a swift, slicing movement of one hand. He stood still, listening. Pilar could hear nothing, though she held her head up, barely breathing. Then she caught it, the quiet shrilling of a warning whistle from the street outside.

  Refugio reached to clamp an arm of steel around her waist, swinging her toward the opposite end of the house. He swept her with him through the silent, dusty rooms. Their footsteps clattered on the stone steps of a back staircase, then they were dodging among the tables of a scullery and kitchen. A great wooden door loomed before them. Refugio put both hands on the wide iron bar that held it closed, leaning his right shoulder into it. In an instant the bar was raised, the portal easing inward, letting in the light from the back patio.

  They paused at the edge of the reflecting pool. From the streets all around the house could be heard the drumming of horses' hoofs. There was a shouted order that was immediately repeated from somewhere near the back patio gate.

  “Is it the police?” Pilar whispered.

  “The good God alone knows, for I don't.” Refugio did not look at her as he answered, but swept the trees near the patio garden wall with his narrow gaze.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Taking care of themselves, as we must.” He touched her shoulder, then pointed toward a jacaranda tree that grew against the wall, reaching upward along the side of the house next door. Just beyond its highest branches was a flat rooftop in the Moorish style, one that in summer was used for taking the evening air. Refugio's meaning could not be plainer; this was their escape route.

  She couldn't do it, she knew she couldn't. Before she could make that clear, she was being boosted among the tree branches. She grasped a limb and pulled herself upward in purest self-defense, then reached for the next limb as she sought a foothold out of the need to make room for Refugio, who was climbing up after her. A moment later he was swinging past her around the tree trunk, then passing hand over hand along the largest tree limb. He dangled a second over the rooftop, then let go. He plummeted downward, landing in a crouch. Straightening at once, he motioned for her to follow his example.

  It had to be done; there was nothing else for it, no time to think, no time for doubts. Behind her she could hear the pounding of booted feet in the rooms of her aunt's house. In a moment she would be seen. If the men had been sent by her uncle, that could mean death for both Refugio and herself. But even if it was only the police, even if there was no danger for her, she must not set them on Refugio's trail. She could not be the cause of El Leon being captured, not after what he had done for her.

  She swung herself out along the tree limb. Setting her teeth together, she let herself fall. Refugio caught her, absorbing the shock of her weight without apparent effort, holding her a moment until she caught her breath. Then they set off at a run.

  They skimmed over the flat roof to the next, where they climbed a jointed clay drainpipe and clambered across a series of steep slants on their hands and knees. At the edge of the last they swung over the side to reach a narrow balcony. A quick glance inside showed that the balcony opened into a ladies' bedchamber and the lady was still abed, fast asleep. Refugio sacrificed his coat for a makeshift rope, and shortly afterward they were strolling away down an alley.

  They found Baltasar and Enrique waiting in a side street a few blocks away, though Charro, and also the farmer and his wife with their squalling child and squeaking cart, were nowhere to be seen. They moved swiftly toward the city gate where they had entered, each of them on guard lest there had been a
general alarm given and all gates closed.

  The gate stood open. The sight of it standing wide, with the same dyspeptic guard on duty to wave them through, was disturbing to Pilar. It meant that the men at her aunt's house this morning must have been sent by her stepfather. It meant that their purpose in being there could only have been to kill her. That being the case, she had no alternative except to go with Refugio, to join him in his mountain stronghold. None at all.

  Less than a mile outside the gates they met Charro on the road leading the horses they had stabled nearby against an emergency. They mounted up and swung back toward the mountains.

  The small band reached the stone hut again in the small hours of the following morning. The journey had been fast and unrelenting. To Pilar it was a blur of rough trails, snatched bites of food taken at the gallop, and brief stops for changes of horses in lonely places. She was so weary she seemed to be moving in a fog. How she stayed in her saddle, she did not know, for her muscles had gone from aching cramp to numbness so complete she felt paralyzed. She swayed, clutching the horse's mane, but did not fall. At the hut she could not get down by herself, but had to be lifted bodily from her horse. As she took a step and the feeling began to return, she stumbled and would have fallen if Refugio had not caught her.

  Pilar saw Isabel standing in the doorway holding a lantern, saw the look of consternation that crossed the girl's pale, agitated face as she saw her in the bandit's arms, but could not seem to find the will to be concerned or to feel anything other than gratitude for his support. All she wanted was a place to lie down, a solid place that did not move.

  Isabel hurried toward them. Her voice seemed to come from far away as she spoke, and it was a moment before the sense of what she was saying penetrated. It was Refugio's sudden stillness that pierced Pilar's exhaustion so that suddenly, unbelievably, she understood.

  “Oh, Refugio!” the girl cried, then faltered. “It's Vicente. I'm sorry, so sorry.”